• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 4, 2024

Google makes a huge number of changes yearly to its products and service, and the rate sometimes accelerates depending on the year and fragmentation of the product category being consolidated. 

Google will discontinue Video Action Campaigns, and in March 2025 will upgrade to Demand Gen as the company builds AI into all of its advertising and creative platforms.

Video Action Campaigns focus on videos, predominately from the YouTube and Google Video partner network. When combined, Demand Gen adds Google feed, Gmail ads, and image ads to the mix. Data shows when images are added to video campaigns, advertisers can increase performance by about 20%.

When Google released Demand Gen last year, ad executives knew the company would decide to make this change. The platform needed to mature and advertisers needed to feel comfortable.

Advertisers can begin using the platform without changing anything, Levinson said, and can continue to run YouTube only if they wish, but will start to see better performance.

“We would like to see them embrace the full-feature set of Demand Gen, because they can add images and reach more people,” he said. “But we want them to test it and see it for themselves before we force any change.”

DoorDash, an early adopter and online food delivery platform based in the U.S., tested Demand Gen and saw a 15x higher conversion rate at a 50% more efficient cost per action compared to their Video Action Campaigns.

Partnering with Kepler Group, a marketing and advertising agency, DoorDash tested a mix of image and video assets to drive more impact across Google and YouTube’s visually immersive platforms.

In early 2025, Google will introduce a migration tool to help manually upgrade Video Action Campaigns to Demand Gen that will carry over historical settings and learnings from Video Action Campaigns to ensure consistent performance.

When asked how Google decides to sunset a product, Levinson pointed to Discovery Ads that ran primarily images and then YouTube Video Action that ran video on YouTube and the Display Network. The platforms offered two different ways to buy media and two inventories. It got complicated for advertisers looking for similar outcomes.   

Most of Google’s products today are powered by AI, and companies have begun to identify through AI duplicate efforts in platforms and services.

“When we see an opportunity to simplify products and the way advertisers buy media,” he said, talking about a fragmented ad marketplace.

Google also will bring features to Demand Gen like omnichannel bidding. Support for buying Demand Gen campaigns in Display and Video 360 will roll out in October, and third-party verification with YouTube brand safety partners and Google video partners inventory are now available in Demand Gen. Advertisers can expect to maintain similar performance with existing video assets — on average, advertisers who only run video ads with Demand Gen saw similar conversions to their Video Action Campaigns at a similar cost per action.