A Guide To Map-Only Demand Gen Campaigns: Best Practices and Case Study Results

If you’re looking to increase awareness of your business in the local area, then Map-Only Demand Gen campaigns offer an efficient, low-cost solution. To avoid costly pitfalls and inefficient results, we’ve put together some best practices alongside key Demand Generation examples showcasing the potential success this campaign type can generate. If you’re looking to tap into the potential of this campaign type, this blog post will help you understand:

• What a Demand Campaign is, how it works and key examples

• The difference between Demand Generation v. Lead Generation

• Key differences between Demand Gen and a Standard YouTube campaign

• How a Map-Only Demand Gen campaign works and how to set it up in Google Ad

• The benefits of a Map-Only Demand Gen campaign

What Is A Demand Gen Campaign?

Launched by Google in 2023, Demand Gen is a visual campaign type that shows ads across Google’s Display Network, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Pitched as a top-to-mid funnel solution, Demand Gen is designed to capture attention from a wide audience and keep brands top of mind for potential new customers. For advertisers and strategists, Demand Gen bridges the gap between Performance Max (higher-funnel, research stage campaigns) and Search and Shopping campaigns (lower-funnel, high-intent campaigns).

How Does A Demand Gen Campaign Work?

Demand Gen uses imagery and video assets to create custom ads across Google’s suite of visual ad placements. If advertisers choose to create a Video ad, they can show their content across YouTube’s ad placements, including YouTube Shorts. For image ads, these will show across the Google Display Network. It’s now recommended to use Demand Gen campaigns for Display Ads, rather than Google’s standard Display campaigns.

In 2026, Google announced that it would be migrating standard Display campaigns into Demand Gen, with a full completion by early 2027.

One key advantage in Demand Gen for advertisers is that it uses the same intuitive audience targeting that’s integrated in Performance Max campaigns. This allows advertisers to input multiple data points into a single audience to train the algorithm on who your ideal customer is. These data points include:

• First Party Data: data provided by you, such as new customers, email subscribers, visitors of specific website page

• Google’s Audience Segments: pre-made audience segments provided by Google that segment people based on their search behaviours. For example, car dealerships can target people actively searching for new SUV’s, used saloon cars, or Volkswagen cars.

• Custom Segments: these are lists provided by the advertiser that contain search terms or websites related to their ideal customer, such as competitor sites or terms related to the product they’re selling.

This helps Demand Gen campaigns by being able to test a layered audience, combining multiple data points rather than testing several separate segments that can become complex, costly and confusing.

Demand Generation v. Lead Generation

The main difference between demand generation and lead generation is that they target different parts of the marketing funnel. Demand generation focuses on the top-to-mid-funnel, which includes people who are engaged but not ready to take action. Examples of mid-funnel users are:

• Actively researching and comparing brands that stock similar products

• Watching reviews on YouTube by different channels / creators

• Browsing a competitor’s website but haven’t discovered your website yet

Demand generation’s core goals are to increase brand awareness, engage relevant users and educate the market. Lead generation is focused on the mid-to-bottom funnel and driving results. This includes people who are ready to take decisive action, for example:

• High-intent search queries on Google that show they are ready to enquire / buy

• They’ve already been on your site but haven’t converted yet

• They’re engaging with your ads and content

The success of lead generation is measured by tangible results, such as online enquiries, phone calls or sales. Although they are different, both demand and lead generation work together to find the right people at the right time. Demand gen captures people at the early stages of their journey and keeps them engaged as they move through the top and middle of the funnel. Once they’re near the bottom of the funnel, lead generation steps in to convert them.

Key Differences Between a Demand Gen and Standard YouTube Campaign

There are three key differences between a Demand Gen video campaign and a standard YouTube campaign:

1. Demand Gen uses more intuitive targeting found in a Performance Max campaign. Standard video campaigns are limited in audiences it can target.

2. To save time on creating separate ads for each format, Demand Gen lets you add several videos into a single ad. This keeps things more organised and efficient, without sacrificing high-performing ad placements.

3. Demand Gen gives you more control over where your ads are shown. You can opt out of certain placements to capture your audience in the most prominent places.

Both campaign types offer advertisers the same range of formats, however, Demand Gen offers a more efficient process to choosing and optimising your content for each format. This helps achieve the most visibility without needing to build individual ads.

How Does A Map-Only Demand Gen Campaign Work?

One advantage of Demand Gen campaigns is the ability to opt out of channels. This helps marketers focus their budget on the specific channels where their audience exists. It also avoids budget wastage on channels that don’t drive results.

This has unlocked a new campaign strategy for local businesses called Map-Only Demand Gen campaigns.

Maps ads work by highlighting your physical business location(s) when people are searching for relevant queries via maps in the local area.  For example, if you are a local dentist, your clinic’s ads could appear for queries such as “dental clinic near me” or “local dentists.

At Discovery Design, we have extensive experience driving results for dental clinics and businesses across the UK. Read about our success client Diamond Whites here.

As well as the highlighted pin location, your business ad will have priority in the local listings that show at the bottom of the Maps. When searchers see the ad, they have the option of:

• Requesting directions

• Going to your website

• Calling your business

What Are The Benefits of Map-Only Demand Gen Campaigns?

According to Google, more than a billion people use Google Maps every month, making it one of the most active channels advertisers can tap into. For businesses that are looking to increase awareness of their physical locations, this campaign type allows them to boost visibility to people who we know are actively searching nearby.

Although Demand Gen is a top-to-mid-funnel channel, Maps naturally attracts high intent search queries, as people are looking for a specific business in their local area (i.e. “dental clinics near me”). Coupled with Demand Gen’s layered targeting methods, you can create highly targeted ads for local searchers to increase awareness to highly relevant audiences.

Finally, Demand Gen makes it easy to create highly segmented ads within one campaign. This makes testing different messaging, creatives and targeting all possible without having to create multiple campaigns each time. If you want tighter budget controls, you can keep your Map-Only ads in a separate campaign from your Display and Video campaigns.

How Do I Setup a Map-Only Demand Gen Campaign?

Demand Gen campaigns require a few components before you can begin the setup, but we’ve broken the essentials down into simple steps to get you started.

1. Gather your assets before you start building your campaign. Map-Only ads can only serve images, so make sure your creatives are highly captivating and relevant.

2. Finalise your first party data. This is your most important data signal, so choose data that contains your highest value customers to help train Google’s algorithm towards your ideal audience.

3. Select your bidding strategy. We recommend starting with a Maximum CPC strategy to take advantage of the low average CPC of Map-Only campaigns.

4. Build your audience signal using your first party data and Google’s audience segments. There isn’t a specific amount of audience segments that Google recommends using. For best practice, keep the selection small and highly relevant.

5. Write your ad copy, which includes headlines and descriptions. Your ad copy should compliment your creatives and be cohesive with your brand messaging. You want people to click on your ad after seeing it on Maps, so keep the copy snappy and direct with clear calls to action throughout.

6. Add your landing page URL. This landing page should feel cohesive with your ad to maintain brand relevance and contain clear information about your business, USP’s and calls to action. For example, you might push users to sign up to your mailing list to get an exclusive discount.

7. Before launching, opt out of all channels except for Maps. This is done at the ad-group level, so if you’re running Map-Only ads across multiple ad groups, make sure that these settings are correct across each one before publishing your ads.

Your Map-Only Demand Gen campaign is now ready to launch.

Common Mistakes Made With Demand Gen Campaigns

Demand Gen campaigns come with a range of options for advertisers, with the ability to target much wider than traditional Search and Shopping campaigns. This means that errors in the campaign can become costly very quickly. We’ve put together a list of common pitfalls to avoid so that you save budget and target the right people for your goals.

1. You’re not using rich first party data in your audience targeting. Although Google allows you to use their pre-defined audience segments, they’ll only get you so far with targeting. First party data is the clearest signal to Google of who your ideal customers are, how they behave and where to find them.

2. Testing too many assets without clear segmentation. A key strength of Demand Gen campaigns is the ability to test a wide range of assets within a single campaign. However, if they’re not segmented clearly, you risk not having the granular insights about which individual assets have driven key results or which assets have been wasting budget.

3. Not opting out of channels that aren’t relevant to your strategy. Demand Gen allows advertisers to show ads on a range of channels, but not all of them will be suitable to your strategy. To save budget and maintain relevance, make sure you opt out of irrelevant channels before you launch your campaign.

Demand Generation Examples

Our recent work with family-run holiday home business Meridian Parks is a key Demand Generation example for digital advertisers. We’ve collaborated with them on long-term strategies to generate enquiries for and raise brand awareness across Google’s channels to people who are looking for a new holiday home in the UK. Since purchasing a holiday home takes time, research and careful consideration, we launched a Demand Gen campaign to capture users when they are in these early stages.

We noticed that when people were researching a particular park, they sometimes started their journey with a particular area, rather than researching a specific park. The Map-Only ads allowed us to highlight our client’s parks to people searching in the nearby area and push them to visit the park or download a free brochure for more information. We compared our results to our current YouTube and Display Ads in our Demand Gen campaign and these are our findings:

• Although the volume of Enquiries is lower, it’s able to generate a Cost per Enquiry that is 85% lower than our other Demand Gen ads

• Our Average Cost per Click is significantly cheaper

• Conversion Rate is stronger via Maps ads compared to YouTube and Display

This shows that highly targeted Map-Only Demand Gen campaigns drive low-cost, high-quality mid-funnel traffic. For businesses that are looking for a cost-effective way of boosting localised brand awareness but have limited budgets, this could be an innovative solution.

A Guide To Map-Only Demand Gen Campaigns: Best Practices and Case Study Results

Demand Gen campaigns are a top-to-mid-funnel solution that offer advertisers a range of channels to push their ads. These work differently to standard YouTube and Display campaigns, especially when it comes to audience targeting. Demand Gen utilises similar audience solutions found in Performance Max, allowing for multi-layered audiences so advertisers can make their campaigns more broad or highly targeted. With the ability of opting out of channels, Map-Only Demand Gen campaigns have emerged as a low-cost, highly-effective campaign type for boosting local visibility. However, there are common pitfalls which we’ve highlighted so you can avoid costly mistakes and losing out on granular insights.

Our recent demand generation examples with our client, Meridian Parks, demonstrates that Map-Only Demand Gen campaigns can drive cheap, relevant traffic and build up a strong mid-funnel audience for our bottom-funnel campaigns. When they do generate enquiries, they are able to do so at a lower Cost per Enquiry than our original mid-funnel campaigns. Curious to see how we can improve your demand and lead generation campaigns? Get in touch with our team today.