What Is a Demand Gen Campaign?
Google's newer, visual, AI-driven campaign type spanning YouTube, Discover, and Gmail — the successor to Discovery campaigns.
What it means
Demand Gen is a campaign type built around image and video creative that runs across YouTube (including Shorts), the Discover feed, and Gmail from a single campaign. It replaced the older Discovery campaign type (fully migrated between January and March 2024), and has since absorbed Video Action Campaigns (as of May 2026) as part of Google's broader consolidation of its awareness- and consideration-focused campaign types.
Why it matters
If you set up a campaign a while ago and it's since been auto-upgraded, don't be surprised to see it still carrying an old "Discovery" or "Video Action" name in places — that's just a leftover label from the migration, not a sign something's misconfigured.
ask datanephew
My campaign is labeled "Discovery" or "Video Action" but I thought those were retired — is that a problem?
Ask datanephew to check the campaign's actual current type. A leftover legacy name after an automatic migration is expected and not something to fix.