Google launches four new Demand Gen features for holiday campaigns
Google introduces brand suitability controls, A/B experiments, video enhancements, and AI image tools for Demand Gen campaigns in November 2025 update.
Google announced on November 17, 2025, four new capabilities for Demand Gen campaigns targeting the holiday shopping season. The product update, branded as the November "Drop," expands advertiser control over creative optimization, brand safety parameters, and testing methodologies across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail placements.
The announcement builds on internal measurement data showing Demand Gen advertisers achieved an average 20% increase in conversions or conversion value during the first half of 2025 across more than 100 product launches, according to the company's documentation. The platform now serves advertisements to approximately 3 billion monthly users across Google's visual advertising surfaces.
Brand suitability extends to Discover and YouTube feeds
New inventory type controls launched November 7, 2025, for YouTube Home feed, YouTube watch next feed, and Discover placements. The expansion establishes consistent brand safety parameters across all Demand Gen inventory sources, addressing advertiser concerns about inappropriate content adjacency.
Three inventory modes determine content suitability thresholds. Standard inventory shows ads across content suitable for most brands, reducing exposure to strong profanity, sexually suggestive material, and dramatized violence. Expanded inventory maximizes available reach by including content with potentially sensitive themes. Limited inventory applies the most restrictive filters for brands with strict guidelines around language and sexual references.
The controls operate through account-level settings within Google Ads Content Suitability Center or advertiser-level configurations in Display & Video 360. Existing inventory mode selections automatically extend to new placement environments without requiring manual adjustment.
Excluded content themes will become available for YouTube Home feed and watch next feed placements later in 2025, according to the announcement from Michele Narov and Andy Ho, Global Product Solutions Leads for Media Responsibility. The feature already functions within Discover inventory, enabling advertisers to prevent advertisements from appearing alongside specific categories including tragedy coverage, political content, or religious themes.
The timing coincides with growing emphasis on brand safety measurement across digital advertising platforms. Google's content classification system analyzes websites and applications through 12 distinct crawlers, applying digital content labels and sensitive topic classifiers to evaluate placement appropriateness.
Asset testing arrives for creative optimization
Asset uplift A/B experiments enable advertisers to test text, images, and videos within Demand Gen campaigns. The feature facilitates comparison between control campaigns and treatment variations containing different creative elements.
Advertisers select a primary success metric from four options: average cost per click, cost per conversion, conversion rate, or click-through rate. The system requires campaigns to collect minimum 100 data points for conversion-related metrics before calculating statistical significance.
Configuration involves duplicating a control campaign to create a treatment arm. Changes apply exclusively to creative assets while maintaining identical targeting, budget, and bidding parameters between both campaign versions. The automated duplication process applies control campaign modifications to treatment campaigns, excluding budget adjustments.
Three confidence level thresholds determine result interpretation. Directional results appear at 70% confidence, balanced assessment occurs at 80%, and conclusive findings require 95% statistical certainty. Lower confidence thresholds accelerate decision-making while higher levels provide greater result reliability.
The platform displays experiment status through three indicators. "Collecting data" appears when insufficient information exists for analysis. "Similar performance" indicates no significant difference between campaign arms at chosen confidence levels. "One arm is better" confirms statistically significant performance variation.
Asset experiments differ from custom experiments that test audiences, bidding strategies, or campaign formats. Custom Demand Gen experiments support up to 10 experimental arms simultaneously, enabling complex multi-variant testing across campaign configurations.
Video enhancements automate creative variations
Automated video modifications generate additional creative formats optimized for different screen orientations and viewing contexts. The system produces vertical crops, shorter cuts, and aspect ratio adjustments without manual editing requirements.
Two generative models power the transformation capabilities. Model 1 intelligently crops existing videos into square (1:1) and vertical (9:16) formats while preserving original content elements. Model 2 uses generative artificial intelligence to extend video frames into new aspect ratios beyond original boundaries.
Shorter video versions extract key moments from longer content using machine learning analysis. The automation identifies significant narrative elements and condenses material while maintaining message coherence and visual continuity.
Generated variations undergo quality review before entering active rotation. Only videos passing evaluation standards receive distribution across Demand Gen placements. The system creates asset variations automatically when enhancements are enabled, requiring no advertiser intervention beyond initial activation.
The feature operates at the ad level within Demand Gen campaigns and at the campaign level for Video Action campaigns. Advertisers control enhancement activation through toggles in the asset optimization settings panel. Enhancements remain enabled by default for new campaigns but can be disabled at any point.
Video enhancement capabilities complement Google's broader creative automation strategy. Similar functionality exists across App campaigns, Performance Max, Video Action campaigns, Video Views campaigns, and Video Reach campaigns, with specific model availability varying by campaign type.
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Image enhancements generate adaptive layouts
Artificial intelligence creates additional image versions featuring text overlays and aspect ratio adjustments. The system analyzes existing images to generate complementary creative assets matching brand style guidelines.
Adaptive layouts add headlines and descriptions directly onto image assets, creating integrated visual-textual compositions. The technology determines optimal text placement, sizing, and styling based on image composition and brand aesthetic patterns identified through machine learning analysis.
Animated image generation transforms static creative into motion graphics. The automation applies subtle animations maintaining brand consistency while increasing visual engagement compared to static alternatives.
Image enhancement availability applies to both Demand Gen and App campaigns. Controls exist at the ad level within the asset optimization configuration panel. The feature activates by default for new advertisements but supports manual deactivation.
Generated assets supplement rather than replace original creative submissions. Advertisers retain uploaded images alongside machine-generated variations, enabling selective deployment based on performance data and strategic priorities.
The announcement precedes broader AI image editing capabilities Google deployed to its advertising asset library in January 2025, including background replacement, object manipulation, and color adjustment functionalities.
Performance context and competitive landscape
Demand Gen campaigns evolved from Google's consolidation of video advertising products. YouTube Video Action campaigns transitioned to Demand Gen formats by April 2025, with creation capabilities for new Video Action campaigns ending in March 2025.
The platform differs from Performance Max through specific inventory focus and manual control options. While Performance Max optimizes across all Google channels including Search, Maps, and Shopping, Demand Gen concentrates on visually-rich surfaces where users browse rather than actively search.
Demand Gen supports lookalike audience targeting, enabling advertisers to reach potential customers sharing characteristics with existing customer bases. The functionality operates through first-party data including Customer Match lists, website interactions, and application engagement patterns.
Format flexibility distinguishes Demand Gen from predecessor campaign types. Advertisers can combine video and image assets within single campaigns, contrasting with Video Action campaigns that supported exclusively video formats. Multi-format creative approaches generated 20% more conversions at equivalent cost per action compared to video-only strategies, according to Google's internal measurement data.
The November updates address advertiser feedback requesting enhanced creative testing infrastructure and granular brand safety controls. Experimentation capabilities expanded throughout 2025, with Google emphasizing that organizations conducting monthly optimization tests achieve 3.1x return improvements over two-year periods when implementing 5% effectiveness gains per experiment.
Marketing measurement sophistication continues advancing across Google's advertising ecosystem. The company reduced incrementality testing budget thresholds from $100,000 to $5,000 in November 2025, democratizing access to causal measurement methodologies previously limited to enterprise advertisers.
Implementation considerations and availability
Feature deployment occurs globally across Google Ads and Display & Video 360 platforms. Account-level inventory controls apply automatically to existing campaigns without requiring manual migration. Asset experiments and creative enhancements operate on opt-in basis through campaign and ad-level settings.
Documentation specifies that inventory type selections influence ad distribution across placement environments. Advertisers selecting limited inventory reduce potential reach by excluding content categories, while expanded inventory maximizes available impressions through permissive content filtering.
Budget implications vary across feature implementations. Asset experiments split traffic evenly between control and treatment campaigns, effectively dividing available budget between test variants. Creative enhancements generate additional assets without budget modifications, allowing algorithms to optimize distribution based on performance signals.
The announcement materials emphasize that enhancements activate automatically for new campaigns unless explicitly disabled. Existing campaigns maintain previous settings, requiring manual activation for advertisers seeking to implement new capabilities.
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Timeline
- May 21, 2025: Google announces AI creative tools including image-to-video transformation powered by Veo model for Merchant Center
- June 12, 2025: YouTube follow-on views optimization launches enabling targeting of users likely to watch additional channel content after ad exposure
- September 7, 2024: Google expands Demand Gen to Display & Video 360 platform with October 2024 rollout timeline
- September 14, 2025: Google unveils comprehensive AI advertising suite at Think Week 2025 including Asset Studio for creative production
- October 2023: Demand Gen experiments introduced enabling A/B testing for campaign optimization
- November 7, 2025: Brand suitability controls expand to YouTube Home feed, watch next feed, and Discover placements
- November 17, 2025: Google announces November "Drop" including asset experiments, video enhancements, and image automation for Demand Gen campaigns
- April 2025: Deadline for creating new YouTube Video Action campaigns as platform transitions to Demand Gen format
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Summary
Who: Google Ads platform serving digital advertisers managing Demand Gen campaigns across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, announced by product teams including Michele Narov and Andy Ho, Global Product Solutions Leads for Media Responsibility.
What: Four new Demand Gen capabilities comprising brand suitability inventory type controls for YouTube and Discover feeds, asset uplift A/B experiments for creative testing, automated video enhancements generating multiple format variations, and AI-powered image enhancements creating adaptive layouts with text overlays and animations.
When: Announced November 17, 2025, as the November "Drop" with brand suitability controls launching November 7, 2025, and asset experiments, video enhancements, and image enhancements available immediately for eligible campaigns.
Where: Available globally through Google Ads interface and Display & Video 360 platform, applying to Demand Gen campaign inventory across YouTube Home feed, YouTube watch next feed, YouTube in-stream, Discover feed, and Gmail placements.
Why: The updates address advertiser demands for enhanced creative testing infrastructure, consistent brand safety controls across expanded inventory sources, and automated creative optimization capabilities to improve campaign performance during the holiday shopping season while reducing manual asset production requirements.