Not every HVAC customer starts with a search for a contractor. The homeowner with a 15-degree split between upstairs and downstairs, the couple whose inspector flagged an old furnace, the neighbor who just watched the house next door get a new heat pump: they're researching long before they type "ac replacement near me."
The research shows up in the data. Americans ask Google "how long does an ac unit last" roughly 9,900 times a month, the question Chapter 2 flagged as a research search rather than a hiring one. In the Reddit threads we read about heat pumps and mini splits, 37 homeowner posts talked about rebates or tax credits, questions people ask while they're still deciding.
Some of that research happens on YouTube, in Gmail and on the websites people read, nowhere near a search for a contractor. Google's way to reach people there is a campaign type called Demand Gen. This chapter covers what it can do that Search can't, when an HVAC account is ready for it, and what to show people who weren't looking for you.
Search Can Use "Climate Control & Air Quality" Shoppers. Only Demand Gen, Display and Video Get "Air Conditioners."
Behind every Google Ads audience is a guess about what a person is up to. For an HVAC company, the guess that matters is the in-market kind: Google's read that someone is shopping for cooling or heating equipment right now.
We pulled Google's own list of HVAC-related segments through the Google Ads API. Two stood out:
- Air Conditioners, an in-market segment for people shopping for AC. Google makes it available to Demand Gen, Display, Smart and Video campaigns. Not to Search.
- Climate Control & Air Quality, the broader segment above it. That one is available to Search campaigns too.
There's no in-market segment for furnaces or heating by name. For heating, the broader climate control segment is as specific as Google gets.
The gap is bigger than one segment. Google's own table of which audiences work in which campaigns shows Search campaigns can't use custom segments, the ones you build from keywords and competitor websites, or life events like moving. Demand Gen can use all of them: affinity, custom, demographics, life events, in-market and your own customer data.
So the most specific audience Google offers for an HVAC company's biggest ticket, people shopping for air conditioners, only runs in the campaigns built for reaching people before they search.
The broader segment still has a use in Search. You can add Climate Control & Air Quality to your exact match campaigns as an observation audience, which doesn't change who sees the ads but reports how those people behave. If in-market searchers book noticeably more often, that's a reason to raise bids for them later. It just isn't the same as reaching the AC shopper who hasn't searched for a contractor yet.
Demand Gen Puts HVAC Ads on YouTube, Gmail, Maps and Display. Nobody There Just Typed "AC Repair."
A Demand Gen ad never waits for a search. It catches the homeowner mid-scroll: before a YouTube furnace teardown, between Shorts, among the Discover cards, in the Gmail promotions tab, on Maps, or beside a local weather story on a Display Network site. Old-style Display campaigns are being folded into it as well, so an HVAC banner ad now gets built here too.
That's a different job from everything in the earlier chapters. Search captures demand that already exists: someone's AC broke and they're looking for help right now. Demand Gen works earlier, putting the company's name in front of a homeowner months before the compressor gives out. A homeowner watching a video about heat pump rebates in March isn't calling anyone today. Some of them will in June, and the company they remember seeing has a head start.
So it waits its turn. An HVAC account adds it only once exact match, broad match and Performance Max are all booking furnace and AC jobs at a known price. An account still learning what a furnace call costs has no business paying to introduce itself to people who don't need a furnace yet.
And it's why Demand Gen gets judged on booked jobs, not views or clicks. A video ad can rack up thousands of views and cheap clicks from people who were never going to call. If the campaign is set to bid for conversions and your tracking from Chapter 1 counts paid jobs, the numbers will tell you whether those views turned into work.
A Demand Gen Budget Needs About 10 Times Its Target Cost per Lead. Most HVAC Shops Should Let Search Pay for It First.
Google's own Demand Gen playbook puts a number on it: the budget should be no less than ten times the cost per conversion you're bidding toward. The campaign needs room to find conversions while it learns, and a thin budget never gives it that room.
For an HVAC company, the math gets big fast. If a booked job is worth paying $150 for, Google's guidance points to at least $1,500 a day for Demand Gen. For a small shop, that's a serious commitment for one campaign.
There are ways to start smaller. Google lists Maximize conversions as a bidding option with no target at all, which lets the campaign spend its budget getting as many conversions as it can. But the underlying point stands: Demand Gen needs volume to learn, and it learns slowly. Google advises waiting for 30 to 50 conversions before judging the effect of a change, and leaving the campaign alone while it's in its learning period.
If you do test it on a smaller budget, narrow everything else so the money isn't spread thin. In our experience, a first HVAC test works best confined to one season, one audience and one message: cooling season, the Air Conditioners segment plus recent movers, and one video about getting the AC checked before the heat. Run it for a set number of weeks, decide in advance what a booked job is allowed to cost, and compare the account's total bookings with the weeks before. If total booked jobs don't move, the campaign was mostly reaching people who would have found you anyway.
So the order matters. Let Search and Performance Max pay for themselves first. When they're profitable and you want more work than people searching for HVAC can supply, Demand Gen is the next lever, funded by money the rest of the account has already earned.
New Homeowners Inherit Someone Else's Furnace. Search Can't Target a Move; Demand Gen Can.
One of the most useful audiences for an HVAC company is people who just bought a house. They inherited a furnace and an air conditioner of unknown age, often with an inspection report that says something about both. They don't have an HVAC company yet.
Google offers life event segments for exactly this, including Recently Moved and Moving Soon. Search campaigns can't use life events at all. Demand Gen can.
Three more audiences belong in a first Demand Gen campaign:
- Lookalikes of your customers. Start from people who already paid you, browsed your site or watched your videos, and Demand Gen goes looking for homeowners who resemble them.
- Custom segments from Chapter 10: the searches that booked jobs and the websites of the companies you compete with.
- The Air Conditioners in-market segment, for cooling season.
Your own customer list is the best seed for the lookalikes. Most HVAC companies have years of names, emails and phone numbers in their field service software. Uploaded to Google Ads as your own data, with customers' consent under your privacy policy, that list describes exactly who has paid you before. A lookalike built from it beats any segment Google can guess at, because it starts from people who actually booked.
Time them to the seasons. Cooling research starts in spring before the first heat; heating research starts in early fall. A Demand Gen campaign that runs flat all year spends its money on people who won't need you for months. Chapter 14 covers splitting budgets by season.
A YouTube Viewer Didn't Search for You. Show a Real Tech, Name the Season and Give One Reason to Call.
Someone watching a cooking video didn't ask to hear about air conditioning. An ad that interrupts them has a few seconds to earn attention, and the usual HVAC ad, a logo and a coupon, won't do it.
What works better is what worked in Search, made visual:
- A real tech. Ten seconds of your tech explaining what they found in a furnace says more than any stock footage. Chapter 8 showed that customers praise the tech who explained. Show that.
- The season, named. "Before the first 90-degree day" or "before the first frost" tells the viewer why now.
- One reason to call. A tune-up, a free second opinion on a replacement quote, a rebate you can help with. One, not five.
- Vertical video for Shorts. Shoot it on a phone, held upright. Polished isn't the point; real is.
A 15-second version might run like this. A tech kneels at an outdoor unit on a spring morning and says, to the camera, "We check the parts that tend to fail in July while it's still April." Cut to a close shot of a dirty coil, then the clean one. Last frame: the company name, the phone number and "Spring AC check, booked this week." No jingle, no stock family, nothing a viewer has to decode.
Use your own photos for the image formats: your trucks, your techs, your installs. A homeowner scrolling Gmail has seen the stock photo of a smiling family on a couch a hundred times.
Next: Local Services Ads Won't Credit a Lead You're Too Booked to Take. Test Them Once Search Books Jobs.
Your account now reaches people before they search: the Air Conditioners shoppers Search can't target, new homeowners, lookalikes of your customers, with real video and a budget big enough to learn. Chapter 10 added Performance Max, Chapter 9 the launch settings, Chapter 8 the ads, Chapter 7 the bids, Chapter 6 the two Search stages, Chapter 5 the keywords, Chapter 4 the ad groups, Chapter 3 the job values, Chapter 2 the order to buy searches in, and Chapter 1 the tracking. Chapter 12 covers Local Services Ads and Google Maps.
The full rollout, from tracking to seasonal budgets, maintenance plans and new-system ads, is on the guide's home page.
When we add Demand Gen for HVAC companies through our Google Ads management, it starts only after Search and Performance Max are profitable, and the first video is shot with the company's own techs. Considering it yourself? Add up what your account spends on a booked job, multiply by 10, and compare it to your daily budget before you build anything.
