Demand Gen and PMax Advertising

PMax Advertising vs. Demand Gen Advertising

Google PMax ads integrate advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, deeply analyze users’ location, device preferences, behavior patterns and current context, and carefully select and display the most suitable target audience for you. This process not only simplifies the allocation of advertising resources, but also ensures that advertising information can accurately reach potential customers.

PMax ads are a good choice for advertisers who want to achieve the following goals:
Simplify the advertising management process, without the need to manage multiple campaigns and materials separately, and cover new and old customers in the Google advertising network at the same time.
Use flexible and personalized goal setting to effectively increase conversion rate, sales, number of potential customers or brand awareness.
With real-time data analysis and strategy recommendations, continuously test and optimize advertising creativity, audience targeting and delivery strategies to accelerate the improvement of advertising results.

In contrast, Demand Gen Campaign is a marketing strategy that goes beyond traditional display advertising. It can actively stimulate potential customers’ demand for products or services by creating and disseminating high-quality content. This strategy closely revolves around the seller’s decision-making process, and gradually builds deep brand trust and loyalty by educating, attracting and nurturing potential customers.
In Demand Gen activities, you can use Google’s highly influential platform to display rich and diverse visual advertising content. These carefully planned ads can not only effectively attract the attention of potential customers, but also capture high-quality potential customers at a deeper level in the sales funnel, laying a solid foundation for the long-term development and stable market position of the company.

Differences between Demand Gen and PMax

Although both Demand Gen and PMax ads can be displayed on multiple ad placements, there are several important differences between them, and understanding these differences is very important for us to effectively use both promotions.

Ad placement One of the most obvious differences between Demand Gen and PMax ads is the coverage of their ad placements.
In this regard, PMax campaigns show a wide range of adaptability and can be placed on multiple platforms such as Google Search, Shopping, Display Ads, Google Maps, YouTube, Discovery Page, Gmail, and Video. In contrast, Demand Gen ads are more focused, mainly on YouTube, Discovery Page, Gmail, and Video Ads.

This overlap in delivery range may lead some advertisers to mistakenly believe that “relying on PMax alone is enough” because it covers a wider range of ad slots. But I would like to remind everyone that ignoring Demand Gen in PPC strategies may mean giving up the unique opportunities and potential advantages provided by this type of activity.

Customer Journey Demand Gen ads and PMax ads have obvious differences in targeting the stages of the purchase decision funnel. Demand Gen ads focus on the middle of the funnel, mainly to attract and cultivate potential customers and customers in the consideration stage, that is, its goal is to stimulate and generate new needs.
In contrast, PMax ads focus on the bottom of the funnel, that is, those users who are close to conversion and ready to buy. Search and shopping ads are often regarded as effective channels at the bottom of the funnel, while video ads, while equally important for Demand Gen ads, are more used to increase brand awareness and guide users into the consideration stage.
Positioning Demand Gen provides advertisers with greater flexibility, allowing them to manually formulate detailed delivery criteria, including strategy planning, channel selection, and precise audience targeting. Advertisers can specifically choose video content as a marketing tool, specify it for display on YouTube, and carefully build and target audiences.

In contrast, this kind of highly customized positioning control is not feasible in the PMax system because PMax uses a different operating mechanism. It follows a fully automated process that can make full use of all available ad placements and rely on intelligent algorithms to automatically select the most optimized advertising resources to drive conversion rate improvements.
It is worth noting that PMax focuses on Google Shopping displays, especially when advertisers only provide product information. Its core strength is automation. In terms of positioning, PMax relies on the audience signal system built by advertisers. When the signal is strong and combined with conversion data or first-party data, the effect is better. Unlike Demand Gen, advertisers cannot directly and manually manage targeting strategies in PMax, which is a significant difference between the two.

Ad creation
PMax ads can automatically integrate the ad materials you provide for creation, so it is very important to ensure the quality of the submitted resources. The Google system will intelligently analyze and select the most effective ad combination, and continue to optimize to achieve the best ad effect.
One PMax strategy that I personally prefer is to build multiple asset groups based on different product themes.
For example, for a home furnishings brand, all assets closely related to the living room can be cleverly integrated into one group, while those related to the bedroom can be set up in another group. Such a strategy can indirectly affect the generation of ads to a certain extent, ensuring that the ad content is closer to the target audience, although there are still some limitations at the direct control level.
In contrast, Demand Gen ads give advertisers full creative control, allowing them to freely upload materials, build combinations and preview. At the same time, advertisers can customize ad content based on the characteristics of ad layouts, such as information flow, interstitial and YouTube Shorts, to adapt to the needs of different platforms.

When to choose Demand Gen? or PMax?
Understanding the differences between Demand Gen and PMax ads can help you choose the campaign that suits you more accurately. When choosing, you may need to consider which ad positions you prefer, the needs of different channel stages, and whether you are willing to give up some control in certain aspects.

Of course, whether you run Demand Gen ads or PMax ads, or both types of ads at the same time, just click the link below to open an account for free and invest yourself, drive business growth, and enhance your overseas capabilities.

When deciding to use PMax ads, overseas advertisers can consider the following key factors:
Full-channel marketing advantages: PMax ads are ideal for marketing strategies that seek to fully cover all stages of the consumer purchase journey. In particular, when you want to focus on improving “downstream” conversions, PMax can be an ideal choice in a full-channel strategy. Multi-ad integration capabilities: If you want to extend your advertising reach from search and shopping to a wider range of display ads and YouTube platforms, PMax can easily achieve this goal with its omni-channel integration capabilities. Its automation features also simplify the setup and management process.

Audience signals and data-driven: PMax relies on accurate audience signals to optimize ad conversions. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that you have sufficient and accurate conversion data in your account. For a single PMax campaign, it is recommended to maintain at least 20 to 30 conversions per month to support its data-driven optimization process.
E-commerce and revenue tracking friendly: For e-commerce brands that can track revenue data in real time, PMax is an ideal tool to improve advertising performance and ROI. At the same time, it is also suitable for accounts that have sufficient data support and focus on lead generation.
When to choose Demand Gen ads Demand Gen ads may be more suitable when manual control and customized strategies are required. In view of the limitations of PMax in terms of control, Demand Gen provides the following advantages:
Highly customized ad management: Demand Gen allows you to manually select ad creatives, ad placements, and targeting strategies. If you have specific requirements for your ad campaigns or prefer to personally control the details, Demand Gen will be your ideal choice. In addition, you can also use Google Ads’ similar audience function to achieve more precise audience targeting.

Precise coverage of targeted ad placements: If your target market is mainly concentrated in specific channels such as YouTube, Discovery Feed, Gmail and video partner websites, Demand Gen can help you achieve more precise advertising and coverage. Effective supplementation in the middle and top of the funnel: In the early stages of increasing brand awareness and attracting potential customers into the sales funnel, Demand Gen may have an advantage over PMax. It can effectively fill the gaps at the top of the funnel and lay a solid foundation for subsequent conversion activities.

Strategy for balancing Demand Gen and PMax
When using Demand Gen and PMax ads at the same time, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the two. They should complement each other rather than conflict with each other. Especially in terms of delivery strategy, it is necessary to avoid PMax ads from excessively encroaching on the space of other advertising activities. Here are some strategic suggestions for balancing the two types of ads:

Basin strategy stratification: In order to reduce the conflict between Demand Gen and PMax, Demand Gen ads can be arranged to focus on brand awareness and interest stimulation, that is, the top of the marketing funnel, while PMax goes deep into the conversion link and optimizes the bottom funnel.
At the same time, the design of Demand Gen ads should closely match the initial needs of users, and clearly recognize that it does not directly bring about conversions, but stimulates interest. PMax ads should make full use of its advantages of precise audience positioning and resource optimization, and focus on improving the effectiveness of activities that promote conversions.
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At the same time, in order to ensure the effectiveness of the campaign, we should set a reasonable daily budget of about 15 times the cost per conversion. Although this may be a challenge for accounts with limited budgets, it is still worthwhile to try and test the potential of Demand Gen, as it has the potential to bring long-term returns that exceed expectations.

Strengthen reporting and data analysis:
Considering the shortcomings of PMax reporting functions, overseas advertisers can use auxiliary tools to strengthen data collection and analysis capabilities, which is crucial to optimizing overall advertising performance.
In this regard, overseas advertisers can test innovative creative elements through Demand Gen campaigns, carefully analyze the performance of these elements, and apply the valuable experience gained from them to PMax campaigns. In this way, not only can the effective complementarity between PMax and Demand Gen be achieved, but also a virtuous cycle between the two can be promoted to jointly improve advertising effectiveness.