Alan Vo

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Google Ads Demand Gen product feeds for catalogues

SEM

I ship Google Ads Demand Gen product feeds when a Magento, Shopify or WooCommerce catalogue already has a clean Merchant Center file and the merchandiser wants YouTube, Discover and Gmail to show real SKUs instead of a mood board. I am a Gold Coast web developer with 18 years on catalogues. I do not buy media as a day job. I do ship the feed, the landing URLs and the purchase tag that decide whether those carousel tiles match stock.

This note is the production setup for a store that already runs Shopping or Performance Max. Demand Gen is not a second Shopping campaign. Google's overview puts it on visual surfaces: YouTube including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network. A product feed turns that campaign into a storefront the shopper can browse. If you leave the feed as the same dump you send to Search Shopping, you will serve four colourways of one shoe, skip the kit that actually converts, and then blame the bid strategy.

Why Google Ads Demand Gen matters on a live catalogue

Google Ads Demand Gen matters on a live catalogue because Display is moving into this campaign type, and because a Merchant Center row can now be the creative on YouTube and Discover, not only a Shopping card.

Google's Display migration help started a phased rollout in June 2026. Eligible Display campaigns can move to Google Display Network on Demand Gen with a migration tool. Later, new Display campaigns will only be created inside Demand Gen, and remaining eligible campaigns will migrate without a click. The tool ports about 42 days of history and aims for a one to two day learning window. You cannot revert. GDN stays opted in on the migrated campaign. That is why I treat Demand Gen as the visual home for a store in 2026, not as a side experiment.

A feed campaign is a different job from a brand video. Google's product feed article says established Demand Gen campaigns with large product selections typically see a 33 percent conversion lift after adding feeds, and campaigns with shallow conversions typically see 18 percent more clicks at a similar cost. Those are Google's published figures, not mine. I still will not turn the toggle on if titles are SKUs, images are 200-pixel swatches, or availability lies. The same feed quality work I wrote about for Google Shopping feed quality is the floor here.

Google Ads Demand Gen dashboard on a laptop in an office

It also does not replace Performance Max. Google's comparison is blunt: Performance Max buys across Search, Maps, Shopping and the visual surfaces. Demand Gen gives you channel control, Lookalike segments and creative tests on YouTube and Discover. I keep brand Search and a retail PMax campaign. I add Demand Gen when the brief is discovery, not when someone wants one campaign to do every job. See Performance Max vs Search campaigns for stores for that split.

How Google Ads Demand Gen actually works

Google Ads Demand Gen actually works as a Merchant Center link, a product-feed campaign toggle, then ads that pull tiles from approved rows while your headline talks about the store, not one SKU.

Link Ads to Merchant Center first. Google's linking help is the same path Shopping uses: Data manager, Connected products, Google Merchant Center. Enable Shopping ads as a marketing method. A new feed can take up to three days to approve. If the Merchant Center account does not appear when you create the campaign, the link or that marketing method is missing.

On Shopify I use the Google & YouTube channel. It syncs products that are available to the online store. Shopify is explicit that an existing Merchant Center feed can be overwritten when you connect. Finish required fields in the channel before you promise a launch date. Syncing help is the checklist I walk with the merchant.

On WooCommerce I use Google for WooCommerce. It pushes products through Google's API. There is no feed URL to paste. Product feed help will not sync rows that lack required fields. Attribute mapping is how GTINs, brand and apparel fields leave custom attributes. Change Sync and show before a wholesale SKU lands on YouTube.

On Magento I treat Merchant Center as a contract, not as a core module. The product data specification is what the export must fill: stable id, honest title, link, image_link, price, availability. Configurable products need item_group_id so Demand Gen does not stack four identical photos of one shoe. I make the existing feed write those attributes the same way the PDP does.

Then create the campaign. Google's create-campaign help starts with the "Run a product feed campaign" toggle. Turn it on and you can only create product ads in that campaign. Pick one Merchant Center account. Pick one feed label or use all available feeds. One feed label per campaign. That is how I split AU versus US catalogues without hoping location targeting will invent stock.

Shopping ads style product photos on a table

Product selection is two passes. During construction you get one filter method with OR logic. After publish, the product groups tab adds subdivisions and exclusions with AND logic. Google will run a campaign with one product. It recommends at least four eligible products so placements can fill, and fifty as the working set. Troubleshooting is the page that fires when a filter left three shoes.

The feed supplies the tiles. You still add store-level copy. The feed article allows one headline and one description on product-feed ads. Put the offer there, not a single SKU name. Google recommends an image-and-products ad and a video-and-products ad so YouTube Shorts and in-stream can serve. Asset specs want square images at 1:1 (1200 by 1200 recommended). Videos need a YouTube upload. Under ten seconds will not serve in-stream. Under five seconds is invalid. Vertical 9:16 is what Shorts wants. Connected TV tiles want Merchant Center images at 500 by 500 or larger.

Two feed attributes do more work here than they do on Search Shopping. short_title is Demand Gen-specific in the spec: optional, max 150 characters, Google asks for something snappy under 65 and without size or gender clutter. item_group_id groups variants so the carousel does not show the same photo four times. I fill both on fashion and furniture catalogues before I touch bids.

Bidding is mixed CPM and CPC depending on surface. Google's FAQ lists Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, Target ROAS, Target CPC and value-based bidding. If conversion values are already honest, the feed article prefers Target ROAS. If you are new to the campaign type, start Maximize Conversions and move after about fifty conversions. Target-based daily budget should sit near ten times CPA. Leave bids alone for one to two weeks.

Lookalike segments are Demand Gen only. Reuse that audience on Search and it shows Eligible - Limited. New customer acquisition can sit on Demand Gen the same way it sits on Search and PMax. I wrote that setup in Google Ads new customer acquisition.

Production checklist before you turn on a product feed

A catalogue is ready for a product-feed campaign when Merchant Center, landing pages and the purchase tag already tell the same story.

  1. Confirm the Merchant Center link in Ads Data manager and that Shopping ads is enabled as a marketing method.
  2. Confirm purchase is a primary conversion with a real transaction value. Hash first-party data. See Google Ads enhanced conversions.
  3. Fix feed diagnostics first. Title, image, URL, price and availability must match the PDP. New feeds can sit in review for three days.
  4. Add short_title on the rows you expect to serve. Keep it under 65 characters when you can. Leave variant size and gender out of that field.
  5. Set item_group_id on colour and size variants. One parent group, distinct images, no four-tile clone.
  6. Prefer square (1:1) product images. Google says a 0.6 to 1.4 ratio still gets coverage.
  7. On Shopify, finish the Google & YouTube channel and accept that it can overwrite a hand-built feed. Exclude draft, wholesale and gift-card products.
  8. On WooCommerce, finish Google for WooCommerce attribute mapping. Clear Product Feed account and product issues before you create the campaign.
  9. On Magento, export the same id you use for Shopping. Do not invent a second identifier for Demand Gen.
  10. Create the campaign with the product-feed toggle on. Pick one feed label. Include at least four eligible products and aim for fifty.
  11. Build an image-and-products ad and a video-and-products ad. Write one store-level headline and description. Path fields are 15 characters each.
  12. Match campaign location to the countries the feed can sell. Demand Gen does not support regional availability and pricing feeds.
  13. Start Maximize Conversions or Target ROAS only after values are clean. Wait fifty conversions or one to two weeks before you chase the bid.
  14. Walk four live tiles. Confirm image, price and URL. Place one test order and confirm the conversion.
Landing page on a phone next to a notebook

What breaks when the Demand Gen feed is wrong

The Demand Gen feed is wrong when the carousel shows a product you would not put on the homepage.

Fewer than four eligible products is the first stop. A jewellery store with three approved rings and a filter that dropped the rest will sit dark. Add products or widen the group.

item_group_id missing is the fashion classic. Eight size rows share one photo. The ad becomes a wall of the same shoe. Group the variants. Give each colour a distinct image_link.

Regional availability and pricing is the multi-store classic. Demand Gen does not read RAAP. A national in-stock row will show in a state that is empty. Google's workaround is a national feed without regional overrides, or a feed label per region and a campaign per label. If a SKU is not national, mark it out of stock at the national level.

Credit card and laptop for conversion tracking work

Shopify overwrite is the feed-ops classic. A merchandiser had a supplemental feed with short_title and custom labels. The Google & YouTube channel replaced the primary source. Those fields vanished. Either map them in the channel or rebuild them after sync. Do not run two writers at the same id.

WooCommerce missing identifiers is the next one. Google for WooCommerce will not sync a row that lacks required fields. Ads still has four eligible products because apparel rows never left WordPress. Map GTIN, brand, colour and size before you filter the campaign.

A products-only ad with no video is the coverage classic. Shorts and in-stream stay thin. Add the video-and-products ad.

Pausing the product feed after launch is the quiet regression. Google says pausing the feed can hurt performance. Exclude a product group instead. Alcohol product feeds are blocked. Sensitive categories often serve YouTube only. Two purchase tags still inflate Maximize Conversions. Deduplicate before you scale.

How to measure Google Ads Demand Gen

You measure Google Ads Demand Gen in the campaign table first, then you referee those numbers against Merchant Center product status and store orders.

Add product-level reporting for the Merchant Center feed. You want conversions and conversion value by item, not only by ad. If one parent SKU takes half the spend and the store barely sells it, the filter is wrong or short_title is a brand slogan.

Segment by channel once you have volume. Demand Gen can sit on YouTube Shorts, in-feed, Home, Watch Next, Search, Discover, Gmail and GDN. A products-only ad that never booked Shorts is an asset gap, not a bid gap.

Do not read the first week as a verdict. Mixed CPM and CPC billing makes CPC look noisy next to a Search campaign. Google's FAQ is explicit: YouTube video and image bill CPM, Discover image often bills CPC, Gmail bills the teaser click, GDN bills CPM. Compare cost and conversion value, not a blended CPC you invented.

Benchmark against social, not against brand Search. A Target ROAS you copied from brand exact will throttle the campaign. If you move from Maximize Conversions to Target ROAS, the FAQ says start about 20 percent looser than the last 30-day ROAS, then step plus or minus 10 percent after learning.

Marketing meeting around laptops

I do not wait for conversion-lift studies to ship a feed. I do wait until purchase in Ads matches the gateway. Landing pages that convert Google Ads traffic still applies: the tile URL has to open the SKU the image promised.

I do not invent lift numbers for my own work. On Their Nibs the published story is the storefront rebuild: 31 percent more conversions, 48 percent more orders. That was merchandising and journey. On retail conversion at scale year-on-year sales rose $2.5 million over three years across three Magento stores. A Demand Gen feed on a weak PDP will spend faster on pretty tiles. It will not fix the page.

Related work on this site

The Magento retail work is where I learned that a feed row is an ad whether you like it or not. The retail conversion at scale case is operations and merchandising on three stores, which is the same discipline a Demand Gen product group needs. The Their Nibs Shopify rebuild is a fashion storefront where collection and PDP quality moved conversion, which is what a YouTube tile actually lands on. The Brigade Overland Shopify migration is the query-to-kit problem: a rooftop-tent tile has to open that kit, not a generic camping story.

FAQ

These are the questions I get after someone toggles Run a product feed campaign.

Does Google Ads Demand Gen replace Performance Max on a store?

No. Google Ads Demand Gen buys visual surfaces with audience and channel control. Performance Max still covers Search and Shopping. I run both when the catalogue and the conversion tag are clean. I do not fold brand Search into Demand Gen.

How many products does Google Ads Demand Gen need in the feed?

Google Ads Demand Gen will accept one available product. Google recommends at least four eligible products so placements can fill, and fifty as the working set. If troubleshooting says you have fewer than four, your filter or your disapprovals emptied the group.

Can Google Ads Demand Gen use a regional price feed?

No. Google Ads Demand Gen does not support regional availability and pricing. Use a national feed, or a feed label per region and a campaign per label. Do not hope location targeting will hide an out-of-stock warehouse.

Should Google Ads Demand Gen start on Maximize Conversions?

Yes, when you do not yet have a Demand Gen CPA or ROAS you trust. Google Ads Demand Gen help says start Maximize Conversions, wait about fifty conversions, then move to Target CPA or Target ROAS. If purchase value is already honest and you have that history, Target ROAS is the feed article's preference.

Google Ads Demand Gen dashboard on a laptop in an office

Keep reading

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