Product feed adoption inside Google's Demand Gen campaigns has more than doubled in two years, reaching 35% of campaigns in 2026, according to data published by Smarter Ecommerce (smec) on July 27, 2026. The shift drags a campaign type once positioned as upper funnel into the same auction territory Performance Max already occupies, and it arrives as retailers finalise fourth quarter budgets.

The Austrian software provider and performance agency published the figures on LinkedIn, where its company page carries 8,917 followers. The accompanying chart, headlined "1 in 3 Demand Gen campaigns uses a product feed," plots three annual data points: 16 percent in 2024, 26 percent in 2025, and 35 percent in 2026. Adoption rose roughly ten percentage points between the first two years and a further nine between the second and third.

Feed connection is not a new capability. What has changed is behaviour. According to smec, "While Demand Gen has long supported product feeds, it has taken time for advertisers to use the opportunity."

What a connected feed changes

Attaching a Merchant Center feed to a Demand Gen campaign alters the inventory and format set the campaign can serve into. Google's 2026 retail advertising guidance, covered by PPC Land in April, described how product data is pulled directly into ad units running on YouTube, Gmail, Discover and the Google Display Network, with product information surfaced automatically once the connection exists. Shoppable connected television formats sit inside that same expansion, and are now available in both Demand Gen and Performance Max.

Smec framed the practical appeal in three parts. "Adding a feed unlocks new formats and placements including Shoppable YouTube on TV. It can boost overall revenue. And it lets even merchants with few creative assets get on board," the company wrote.

That last point carries weight for smaller catalogue owners. Demand Gen was built around visual assets: images at 1.91:1 landscape, 1:1 square and 4:5 portrait ratios, plus video in landscape, square and vertical orientations, and carousel units holding between two and ten cards. Merchants without a production budget for that asset library were effectively locked out of a campaign type whose entire premise is visual engagement. A feed substitutes catalogue imagery for bespoke creative.

The control layer has thickened in parallel. Custom label support arrived for Demand Gen campaigns after Google updated its Merchant Center product data specification on June 28, 2026, giving advertisers the same product segmentation filters they already applied in Shopping and Performance Max. Before that change, a connected feed came without the ability to slice the catalogue for reporting or bidding purposes.

The overlap smec is flagging

The company's central argument is not that feeds are bad. It is that the boundary between two Google campaign types has eroded. "While Demand Gen and PMax used to be plainly differentiated, Demand Gen has drifted down the funnel and increased its channel overlap with PMax," smec wrote, adding that "advertisers are leaning increasingly hard on product feeds."

The warning is explicit. According to smec, "A sizeable share of merchants also use PMax, and feed-based Demand Gen can have an uncomfortably high degree of overlap with what PMax is trying to do."

That tension has a documented history. Google set out a formal separation between the two campaign types on February 13, 2025, casting Performance Max as an end-to-end automated system optimising for conversion value across every Google surface, and Demand Gen as a controlled environment for visual-first placement where consumers are not actively searching. Eighteen months of product releases have narrowed that gap from both directions.

At Google Marketing Live 2026 on May 20, Google added Maps inventory to Demand Gen, extended product feeds into the automotive vertical, opened checkout links in nine additional markets, and introduced an AI-assisted campaign creation flow that prefills a new Demand Gen campaign using settings and creative assets copied from an existing Performance Max campaign. The same package included Uplift Experiments and Campaign Type Attribution, measurement tools built specifically to test whether Demand Gen and Performance Max cannibalise each other's attributed conversions when they run in parallel.

The direction of travel is unambiguous. Google confirmed on May 26, 2026 that standalone Display campaigns are being retired and the Google Display Network folded into Demand Gen, with a phased migration tool rolling out from June and full transition expected during 2027. A campaign type that began as the successor to Discovery campaigns, absorbed YouTube Video Action campaigns by April 2025, and has now inherited more than two million display sites and apps is no longer a narrow upper funnel instrument.

Practitioner scepticism runs the other way

One comment on the smec post inverted the framing. Matt Rubinstein, Paid Search Manager at 829 Studios, wrote: "imo a lot of ecom brands do well with search, shopping and demand gen. I don't see a major advantage to using PMax over a combo of these campaigns, but am open to other opinions here."

The remark reflects a live disagreement in the practitioner community about which side of the overlap should give ground. Advertiser demand for granularity inside Performance Max has been persistent, and Google began an alpha test in 2026 allowing selected buyers to exclude search partner and display network inventory from Performance Max campaigns, a control Demand Gen has offered through channel selection since March 2025.

The measurement case for spending on Demand Gen

Adoption figures alone say nothing about returns. A structured programme run by measurement firm Fospha alongside Google between October 29 and December 16, 2025 provides one of the few controlled datasets. That study covered 25 retail ecommerce brands across fashion, beauty and consumer goods, spanning 28 market deployments. Brands allocating between 10 and 20 percent of their Google budget to Demand Gen recorded double the return on ad spend of brands allocating under 5 percent. Brands that added two channels to their mix showed a 37 percent return gap against those that added none.

That programme ran across a fourth quarter window, which is precisely the period smec is now addressing.

Fourth quarter timing

The company positioned feed-enabled Demand Gen as a seasonal instrument. "This is particularly important as a Q4 tactic where Demand Gen can keep your products top of mind in the early season research phase, and drive performance as the holidays arrive," smec wrote.

Mike Ryan, Head of Ecommerce Insights at Smarter Ecommerce, presents the company's session today, July 28, 2026, titled "The 2026 Q4 Playbook: Scale Google Ads through the Holiday Peak," scheduled for 3:00 PM in Vienna, 2:00 PM in London and 9:00 AM in New York. Ryan is a recurring source of European Google Shopping auction data; smec's Market Observer tool draws on more than 450 million euros of annual European retail ad spend across thousands of active campaigns, including over 4,000 Performance Max campaigns.

That dataset has produced several findings this year. In April, smec documented that JD.com's Joybuy platform had been buying Google Shopping ads across EU markets throughout March 2026, two weeks before its European launch was publicly reported. In June, the same tracking showed Temu's account-level auction presence halving since March and SHEIN approaching a full exit from the channel following the European Union's introduction of a flat three euro customs duty per item on July 1, 2026.

Why this matters to the marketing community

Feed adoption at 35 percent means the majority of Demand Gen campaigns still run without one. The trend line, not the level, is the operative signal: a campaign type is converging on the behaviour of the automated campaign type sitting next to it in the same account, using the same product data, bidding into overlapping inventory, and now sharing shoppable connected television formats that Google has pushed hard since YouTube added two-click checkout through Google Pay at Brandcast on May 13, 2026.

Several structural changes land inside the same planning window. Google will alter bidding behaviour for budget-limited campaigns running Target CPA or Target ROAS on August 17, 2026, a change that covers Demand Gen line items in Display and Video 360 as well as Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Travel and Display campaigns in the main interface. DV360 completed full API support for Demand Gen line items, ad groups and ads on June 10, 2026, including a dedicated demandGenProductAd field for feed-driven creative. A five dollar minimum daily budget took effect for Demand Gen campaigns from April 2026.

Inventory quality during the peak is a separate variable. Research published on July 21, 2026 found that made-for-advertising and ad clutter traffic rose 5 percent over Christmas 2025 while impressions climbed 219 percent between November 2 and December 5, a divergence between delivery volume and outcome that sharpens whenever budgets peak.

The unresolved question smec put to its audience was blunt: "Is this good or bad, and how will it play into your Q4?" No published dataset yet quantifies the incremental value of a feed-enabled Demand Gen campaign running alongside Performance Max in the same account, on the same catalogue, during the same eight weeks. Google's own Uplift Experiments framework, announced two months ago, exists to answer that question. Whether advertisers run those experiments before November, rather than after, will determine how much of the answer arrives in time to matter.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Smarter Ecommerce (smec), an Austrian Google Ads software provider and performance agency, published the data. Mike Ryan, Head of Ecommerce Insights at the company, presents the accompanying session. The findings concern ecommerce merchants running Google Ads, particularly those operating Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns in the same account. Matt Rubinstein, Paid Search Manager at 829 Studios, responded publicly to the post.

What: Data showing product feed adoption in Demand Gen campaigns rising from 16 percent in 2024 to 26 percent in 2025 and 35 percent in 2026, alongside smec's assessment that feed-enabled Demand Gen now overlaps materially with what Performance Max campaigns are built to do.

When: The data was published on LinkedIn on July 27, 2026. The associated session, "The 2026 Q4 Playbook: Scale Google Ads through the Holiday Peak," runs today, July 28, 2026, at 3:00 PM Vienna time, 2:00 PM London time and 9:00 AM New York time.

Where: The analysis addresses Google Ads accounts globally, with smec's underlying auction datasets drawn primarily from European retail advertisers. Demand Gen campaigns serve across YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network, including shoppable connected television placements.

Why: Product feeds unlock formats, placements and revenue for merchants with limited creative assets, but they also pull Demand Gen down the funnel into inventory and objectives already covered by Performance Max. With fourth quarter budgets being committed now, and a Google bidding change taking effect on August 17, 2026, the degree of duplication between the two campaign types carries direct spending consequences for retail advertisers.