Red's Fly Shop sells rods, reels and waders online. In the Google reviews we read from its online customers, 9 of 44 mention the shop's YouTube videos. One buyer put it plainly: "One of the biggest reasons I ordered from them is because of the great video reviews they do of new rods and reels on YouTube."
That's the case for YouTube in one sentence. Shoppers research there before they buy, and a store that shows up with useful video earns the order before it pays for a click. Google's Demand Gen campaigns are the paid way to put that video, and the products under it, in front of more of those shoppers.
But Demand Gen asks more of a store than Search or Shopping do. It needs more orders before it can bid on their value and a bigger daily budget to learn from. So this chapter runs in the order a store meets the questions: is the account selling enough yet, can the budget carry it, do the videos already earn orders on their own, and how do the products get attached to the video. The examples come from the stores in this guide. Your timing depends on your order volume. The order of steps holds.
Search and Shopping Can Bid on ROAS at 15 Sales in 30 Days. Demand Gen Needs 50 in 35.
Chapter 7 covered Google's floor for Target ROAS in Search and Shopping: at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days. Demand Gen's floor is much higher. On the Target ROAS help page, Google says a Demand Gen campaign needs "at least 50 conversions in the past 35 days (10 of these conversions must have occurred in the past 7 days) in the campaign, or 100 conversions in the past 35 days (across all Demand Gen campaigns in the customer account)." The same thresholds apply before Demand Gen can use Maximize conversion value.
There's a reason the bar is higher. Search and Shopping reach people who typed what they want. Demand Gen reaches people who weren't searching: viewers on YouTube and Shorts, readers on Discover, people in Gmail and Maps, and on sites across Google's Display Network. Google doesn't give its reason for the higher bar. Our read: a purchase from someone who wasn't looking is rarer, so the bidding has less to learn from with each one.
For a store, that puts Demand Gen after Search, Standard Shopping and usually Performance Max. Those campaigns catch the shoppers already looking. Demand Gen is for growing past them, and it works best once the account has the orders to steer it.
Count those orders the same way every other campaign does. Demand Gen bids on the conversions you tell it to, so the purchase action from Chapter 1, with its real order value, should be the goal. If add-to-cart is still set as a primary conversion anywhere in the account, a campaign this far up the funnel can end up chasing carts that never check out.
Google Sets a Demand Gen Budget at 10 Times the Target Cost per Sale. At $40 per Sale, That's $400 a Day.
Google's troubleshooting page for Demand Gen campaigns that aren't running well calls it the "10x Rule." For a campaign with a target, it says, "Your daily budget should be at least 10 times your tCPA," and gives the example of a $15 target needing a $150 daily budget. For campaigns maximizing conversions without a target, it says to "maintain a minimum daily budget of $100 USD." Google's performance guide adds that a low daily budget is "usually the top reason a new Demand Gen campaign underperforms."
Here's what that means for a store, as an illustration. Picture a fly shop whose Search and Shopping campaigns spend around $40 to land each order. Google's rule puts its first Demand Gen campaign at $400 a day, which is close to $12,000 over a month. Even the no-target minimum of $100 a day comes to about $3,000 a month.
Set that against Chapter 3's budget math. A store still proving its break-even ROAS on Search and Shopping usually can't spare that much for traffic that converts less often. A Demand Gen campaign launched on a thin budget doesn't save money. It gives the campaign too few sales to learn from, so it spends without getting better. If the budget isn't there yet, wait, and put the money where it already works. A store with $3,000 a month to spare usually gets more from raising budgets on Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns that are limited by budget and beating their targets. Those campaigns already have the order data. Demand Gen would be starting from scratch.
9 of 44 Red's Fly Shop Reviewers Mention Its YouTube Videos. Shoppers Research on YouTube Before They Buy.
Red's Fly Shop shows what video can do before any ad money goes in. The shop posts reviews of new rods and reels on YouTube, and buyers notice. Among the 44 Google reviews we read from its online customers, 9 mention the videos.
It's not just one shop. When we pulled 120 Google results pages for category searches across our four store types, AI Overviews appeared on most of them, and their most-cited source was YouTube, with 30 citations. Shoppers asking Google what to buy are being pointed to videos.
You can check whether your own videos already sell before spending anything. In your analytics reports, look at visits and purchases that came from youtube.com. Read your reviews and customer emails for mentions of a video, the way Red's buyers mentioned theirs. And look at which of your videos people watch to the end. A video that already sends buyers is the one to put money behind.
That changes the order of work. Before a store buys YouTube reach, it should have videos worth watching: product walk-throughs, comparisons, how to choose a size, what's in the box. The kind of video shoppers search for anyway. Those videos earn sales on their own, and they become the strongest material a Demand Gen campaign can use.
It also connects to Chapter 10. Without your own video, Performance Max builds one from your images and text. A store with real product video gives both campaigns something better to run.
A Product Feed Puts Your Products Under a Demand Gen Video. Google Calls It a Virtual Storefront.
Demand Gen can carry your product feed, the same Merchant Center data behind your Shopping ads. Google's help says to "use product feeds with Demand Gen to turn your image or video ads into a virtual storefront." On a video ad, it says, "a minimum of 4 product images can be shown below the video ad," so a viewer watching a pan review can tap the pan, or the set, without leaving to search for it.
Setting it up takes a few steps:
- Turn on Shopping ads as a marketing method in Merchant Center.
- Pick the products. Use the same custom labels from earlier chapters to show the products that match the video, not the whole catalog.
- Allow time. Google says "new product feeds can take up to 3 days to approve."
- Shoot vertical too. Google says vertical video lets the ad serve on YouTube Shorts.
Each store type in this guide has its own natural video. A fly shop reviews a new rod on the water. A coffee roaster shows a brew method and the beans that suit it. A cookware brand sears a steak in the pan it sells. An e-bike store rides a hill with a bike and shows the range on the display. Each one answers a question buyers already search for, and each one has an obvious product to sit underneath it.
Lead with the products in the video. Google recommends at least 4 products per campaign, so a comparison of two e-bikes should carry those two bikes plus close matches, such as the same models in other sizes, rather than the store's best sellers. A shopper who taps a product under a video expects something close to what they just watched.
Video Action Campaigns Are Gone. Google Moved the Last of Them Into Demand Gen, So Older Tutorials No Longer Apply.
If you've searched for how to run YouTube ads for a store, you've probably found guides to Video action campaigns. Those are gone. Google's help says it was "automatically upgrading the final campaigns to Demand Gen by April 2026."
So for a store today, YouTube ads that bid on sales come from two places: Demand Gen, which this chapter covers, and Performance Max, which can show on YouTube as part of its mix. Older guides that walk through Video action campaign settings, or that treat YouTube as a separate campaign type with its own conversion bidding, describe a setup Google has replaced. Check the date on any tutorial before you follow it. Settings, bidding options and even the campaign's name may have changed since it was written, and Google's own help pages are the only source that stays current.
Next: Rivals Advertise on "Aventon Ebike," a Name Bid Up to $23.74 a Click. Your Store's Name Needs Its Own Campaign.
Demand Gen goes after shoppers who don't know your store yet. Chapter 12 goes the other way: the shoppers who type your store's name, and the rivals who bid on it.
Earlier chapters cover Performance Max and the settings to check before launch. Every chapter is on the guide's home page.
When we add Demand Gen for a store through Google Ads management, the order count, the budget and a real product video are in place first. Doing it yourself? Count last month's purchases and check whether you're near 50 in 35 days before you open a Demand Gen campaign.
