Up to this chapter, each campaign has needed the patient to make the first move. Search needs someone to type "skin check near me." Performance Max, for all its reach, still learns from people who already went looking. Demand Gen is the first campaign that goes out and finds people who weren't looking at all.
For most specialties, that's a nice extra. For dermatology, it's close to the heart of the job. A great many of the patients who most need a skin check never search for one. They have a spot on their shoulder they've stopped noticing, a spouse who keeps mentioning it, and no plan to do anything about it this year. Demand Gen is how a practice reaches them on YouTube, in Gmail and across the apps they already use.
This chapter covers how a dermatology practice uses Demand Gen without breaking Google's health rules, without frightening anyone, and without spending money it doesn't yet have, building on the Performance Max setup from Chapter 10.
Demand Gen Reaches People Before They Think of a Dermatologist
Demand Gen is Google's campaign type for reaching people through images and video rather than search results. According to Google, it runs across YouTube and YouTube Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network. Google is also folding its old Display campaigns into Demand Gen, and since June 2026 advertisers have been able to move existing Display campaigns over with a migration tool in the account. If a practice once ran banner ads, this is where that kind of advertising now lives.
The campaign does something none of the earlier chapters could. It puts the idea of a skin check in front of someone scrolling through a cooking video or reading their email, long before they would ever search "dermatologist."
That power is also why it comes last in the rollout. In the plan this guide follows, Search runs first, then Performance Max once there are months of real bookings, and Demand Gen only after both are working. A Demand Gen campaign introduces the practice. Search and Performance Max are what catch the patient when that introduction works, weeks later, and they need to be in place and proven before the introduction starts.
Keep it to one purpose at first. The most natural use for a dermatology practice is medical: getting people who've put off a skin check to book one. A cosmetic Demand Gen campaign is possible, and some practices run one, but it belongs in its own campaign with its own budget, for the same reasons Chapter 10 split Performance Max by funnel.
An Awareness Ad Can't Frighten Anyone Into a Skin Check
The quickest way to write a skin cancer ad is to scare people. It's also the quickest way to get it rejected.
Google's policy on shocking content does not allow promotions that "suggest you may be in danger, be infected with a disease," and its clickbait rules separately prohibit ads that use negative life events such as illness to create fear and push people into acting right away. An ad that says "That mole could be melanoma. Book today" sits squarely inside both. So does any image of a suspicious lesion, a biopsy site or a surgical wound.
The good news is that the hopeful version is also the true one, and it's more persuasive. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, "The five-year survival rate for people whose melanoma is detected and treated before it spreads to the lymph nodes is 99%." That's a reason to book a skin check that doesn't depend on frightening anyone. It says that catching something early works, and that the visit is how you catch it.
Be careful in the other direction too. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has found the evidence insufficient to recommend routine skin exams for everyone, and the American Academy of Dermatology takes a different view. Ad copy that claims every adult needs a yearly full-body check goes further than the evidence. Invite people instead. "Haven't had your skin checked in a while?" is an invitation. "You need a skin check every year" is a claim you would have to defend.
Golfers, Gardeners and Beachgoers Are the Audiences Google Still Allows
Demand Gen, like Performance Max, depends on audiences. This is where the health rules from Chapter 9 bite hardest.
For sensitive health topics, Google doesn't support Customer Match, remarketing lists, audience expansion or lookalike segments. There's also a rule that catches many practices by surprise. Custom segments, the ones you build from search terms or website addresses, are limited when the ad or landing page is about a sensitive health topic. Google's footnote says those campaigns will serve only on Display to non-sensitive audiences or through the content of the page, and other campaigns using them "won't be eligible to serve." For a skin check campaign pointing at a skin cancer page, custom segments may simply not run.
What remains are the audiences Google builds itself: affinity segments based on long-term interests, in-market segments, life events and demographics. For dermatology, those turn out to be a good fit. Sun exposure is the risk factor most people recognize, and Google's affinity and in-market segments cover many of the people who get the most of it: outdoor enthusiasts, golf and other outdoor sports fans, and people planning beach trips. Browse the segment list in the audience manager for others that fit your area, such as gardening or boating. None of these audiences is about health. They're about how people spend their weekends, which is exactly why they're allowed.
Two limits apply. Users Google believes are under 18 aren't eligible for personalized advertising at all, so a teen acne campaign can't be built this way. And demographic targeting by age should be used lightly. Skin cancer isn't only a concern for older adults, and cutting out younger outdoor audiences can leave out the people with the most summers still ahead of them.
Film the Dermatologist Explaining the Visit, Not the Skin
Demand Gen is a visual campaign, and it lives or dies on its images and video.
The single most useful asset a dermatology practice can make is a short video of one of its dermatologists explaining what a skin check actually involves: how long it takes, whether they'll change into a gown, what the doctor looks for, and what happens if something needs a closer look. Many people put off a skin check because they don't know what to expect. A calm, friendly minute from a real doctor removes that reason.
Film it in a few shapes. Google supports horizontal, vertical, square and portrait video, and the videos need to be uploaded to YouTube, though they can be unlisted. Vertical matters most for YouTube Shorts. For images, supply landscape (1.91:1), portrait (4:5) and square (1:1) versions.
What to leave out follows from Chapter 10. Google's sexual content rules restrict nudity even when it's blurred, and ads with that kind of content can't run on YouTube, Gmail or the Display Network, which is most of Demand Gen. Full-body exam footage and close-ups of skin both risk a restricted or rejected ad. Show the doctor talking, the exam room with the patient fully clothed, the front desk and the waiting room. And as with every campaign in this guide, skip AI-generated faces and stock models. The whole point of the video is that this is a real doctor at a real practice.
Ten Times the Target Cost per Booking Is the Entry Fee
Google's own guidance on Demand Gen budgets is blunt. For campaigns bidding to a target cost per acquisition, it recommends a budget of at least ten times that target.
Put a practice's own numbers into that. Suppose the account's Search campaigns book a new skin check patient for about $120. A Demand Gen campaign aiming at a similar target would need a daily budget of at least $1,200 to learn properly. That's an illustration, not a benchmark, but the math is the point. A campaign given a small fraction of that tends to spend its money without ever collecting enough conversions to learn from.
That's why Demand Gen comes late. A practice that can't comfortably fund ten times its target cost per booking isn't ready for it, and there's no shame in that. The same money in Search, on keywords that already book patients, will do more. When the budget is there, start with bidding for conversions and no target, let the campaign learn for several weeks, and only then set a target based on what it actually achieved, the same pattern Chapter 7 used.
Plan Around May and the Summer Sun
Skin cancer awareness has a calendar. May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month in the US, and the phrase itself draws about 1,600 searches a month across the country. Spring and summer are also when people are outdoors, thinking about sunscreen and noticing their skin.
That makes Demand Gen a natural fit for a seasonal flight rather than an always-on campaign. Launch in spring, run through the summer, and put the bulk of the budget into May and the weeks around it. In the fall and winter, when attention drifts, the budget can go back into Search.
Start narrow on channels. Demand Gen lets you choose where ads run, and for a first campaign YouTube and Shorts are usually enough, because that's where the video does its work. Add Gmail and Discover once you can see what the first channels deliver, and bring in the Display Network last, if at all.
A Demand Gen Win Shows Up Weeks Later in Search
Judging Demand Gen by its own report is tempting and misleading. It will show views, clicks and some conversions, and the views will look impressive. Very few of them will turn into bookings the same day, because that isn't how awareness works.
The real effect tends to appear elsewhere. Someone sees the dermatologist's video in May, thinks about it for three weeks, and then searches for the practice by name or types "dermatologist near me." That booking shows up in Search, often in the brand campaign from Chapter 6.
So measure over months, not days. Compare skin check bookings during the flight with the same months last year. Watch searches for the practice's name and for "dermatologist near me" in the Search campaigns, and look for a rise that lines up with the flight. Ask the front desk to note new patients who mention seeing a video. None of these is perfect on its own, but together they give an honest picture, and they're far better than a view count.
If a full season passes with no movement in bookings or searches, cut the campaign and move the money back into Search. An introduction nobody remembers wasn't worth paying for.
Next: Local Services Ads and What a Dermatologist Can't Control
Demand Gen is the last campaign in this guide that a practice fully controls. Chapter 12 looks at Local Services Ads. A dermatology practice is charged per lead rather than per click there, but it can't choose which conditions or patients those leads come from, and that trade is why this guide treats them as optional and late.
The Google Ads for Dermatologists guide home lists every chapter. Under our Google Ads management, Demand Gen is added only once Search and Performance Max are booking patients at a cost the practice can live with.
