Audi achieves impressive results with Demand Gen on YouTube

Demand Gen bridges the gap between awareness and performance

To bridge the gap between high-reach awareness marketing and performance marketing, one campaign type was particularly suitable: Demand Gen. The AI-based campaign type aims to attract the attention of relevant target groups in an early phase of the buying process on visually strong Google channels such as YouTube, Discover or Gmail with appealing video and image content. Google AI automatically puts together the most effective combination of tailored videos, images, messages and placements.

“The Demand Gen setup was one of the core components in our campaign setup and enabled us to put together the ideal mix of Google products,” says Ender Ceylan, Director Digital at PHD Media. In addition to YouTube as the core product, Demand Gen campaigns also occupy placements on the Discover Feed, Gmail and YouTube Shorts to achieve the mid-funnel goals. “By using this mix in an optimized and systematic way, we were able to get the most out of the campaign and cover the funnel very broadly,” summarizes the media professional. After Google AI had collected enough campaign data, PHD decided to give the artificial intelligence a little more freedom and also activated the “Optimized Targeting” function to expand the audience in a performance-oriented manner – with success. “Because we were able to address the target groups even better, we were able to maintain performance and use the budget efficiently,” praises Caroline Lemoine.

Efficiently generated traffic with high-quality conversions

When the first campaign results arrived, the marketers could hardly believe their eyes: “We were very positively surprised at how efficiently the traffic was generated,” says Ender Ceylan. “We’re not talking about a typical cost per click (CPC) of 0.11 euros in a native environment, but rather platforms such as YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Shorts. The fact that this lineup of Google products was still able to achieve an eCPC of 0.11 euros – and with a remarkably high number of high-quality conversions – is impressive.”

In addition, the campaign also generated a significant increase in search queries. “We already know such an effect from cross-channel campaigns and less so from a digital-only campaign,” notes Caroline Lemoine. “But in this case, we found that the Demand Gen campaign in particular generated an incredible boost. This not only led to an overall increase in traffic, but also a significant search uplift. These results show how effective the campaign was and how much it influenced search queries.”