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Google is evolving how its advertisers drive video conversions. Video Action Campaigns (VAC) will be upgraded to Demand Gen campaigns this month, bringing enhanced features to capture interest and drive action from even more potential customers.
Demand Gen campaigns offer similar benefits to VAC campaigns, with the added advantage of expanded reach across YouTube, Discover and Gmail - allowing customers to tap into Google’s most engaging and personalized touchpoints. Advertisers who have added Demand Gen to their Search and/or PMAX campaigns have seen an average of 14% more conversions. (Source: Google internal data April - May 2024)
You may wonder, “What does this mean for my creative strategy, and how can I easily navigate this transition?”
This transition brings the need for additional creative such as image assets or videos to help support Carousel ads within Demand Gen. It could feel like - oh no, I have to create all new creatives! Not so fast.
With Smartly, you can quickly deliver on the creation of new creative, all optimized for these new asset requirements, and upload with proprietary tools such as Vertical Video Import, limiting any potential interruptions to your media activity.
Smartly: Maximize Your Demand Gen Potential
Beyond creative development, Smartly can supercharge Demand Gen campaigns through the following:
- Efficient Scale of Best Performing Creative: Using unique-to-Smartly tools like Vertical Video Import, advertisers can look within the Smartly platform to easily identify and leverage creative insights from existing social media engagement in order to easily lift and shift assets to Demand Gen.
- Faster Time to Market: Spend less time on execution with YouTube bulk upload to help get your video to market faster.
- AI Automation: Smartly can assist in the creation of many different versions of image and video assets through automation feeds as well as image and video templates, giving advertisers the tools to easily meet the best practice recommendations for Demand Gen.
- Maintain Creative Alignment: Advertisers provide a more dynamic and engaging ad experience by combining video and image assets. Smartly can help to ensure fresh, consistent creative across platforms.
- Gain a Unified View: Smartly offers comprehensive insights from all campaigns, both with social media activity and Google Ads, all within a single view, allowing advertisers to operate with a de-duplicated perspective across all channels.
FACES Achieves Significant Results with Smartly
Beyond time savings, creative alignment, and improved advertiser experience, Smartly enables powerful business results. Let’s take a look at how FACES, the leading high-end beauty retailer in the Middle East, made the move to Smartly and Demand Gen not just to deliver better performance but also save time.
FACES runs sophisticated, multi-channel campaigns across social and programmatic platforms. They needed efficiency, speed, and a unified workflow to stay ahead. When Google announced the transition from Video Action Campaigns (VAC) to Demand Gen campaigns, FACES faced a critical challenge: ensuring a smooth migration without disrupting performance.
By shifting to Demand Gen through Smartly, FACES achieved remarkable results both in performance and cost, including a CTR increase of 39% and a CPC decrease of 40%.
But the impact extended beyond key metrics. Smartly enabled FACES to launch Demand Gen campaigns faster, with creative, media, and reporting consolidated in one place across channels. FACES is now poised to maximize its creative investments by repurposing assets from other channels for YouTube and beyond. This translates to greater efficiency, agility, and performance across their entire media mix.
"The tool has significantly improved our efficiency in building and updating campaign assets, saving approximately 30 minutes per campaign. Additionally, ad editing is now much more seamless compared to the platform's native interface, with faster load times enhancing our workflow," according to Saleha Ashikali, Senior Media Manager at Havas
By embracing innovation and utilizing the right tools, FACES maintained performance and unlocked new levels of efficiency and effectiveness in its digital advertising strategy.
VAC migration officially begins in April. Reach out to Smartly so we can help you with your Demand Gen transition today.
