Demand Gen vs Video Action Campaigns: What Changed (2026)

Demand Gen is the campaign type that replaced Video Action Campaigns. Google stopped letting anyone create new Video Action Campaigns in April 2025, began auto-upgrading existing ones in July 2025, and finished the last upgrades by April 2026. The practical difference is reach and format: where Video Action Campaigns ran on YouTube, Demand Gen also serves on Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network, and it adds image and carousel formats alongside video. Bidding expanded too, and Google now recommends a budget of at least 10 times your target CPA.

If you learned Google video advertising before 2025, the campaign you knew is gone. This is not a rename. Demand Gen changes where your ads run, what creative it takes, and how you read the results, and a lot of advice still floating around describes a campaign type that no longer exists. Here is what actually changed and what it means for the way you plan and measure.

What replaced Video Action Campaigns?

Demand Gen replaced them. Google published a clear timeline for the transition, and it is worth having the dates because they explain why your account may have upgraded at a different time than someone else's.

On the Display and Video 360 side, the equivalent YouTube video action line items were paused and archived starting February 28, 2026. So by the middle of 2026 there is no version of the old campaign left to run. Demand Gen is the only path for this kind of buy.

How is Demand Gen different from Video Action Campaigns?

Three things changed that matter for planning. The first is where your ads serve. A Video Action Campaign was a YouTube product. Demand Gen serves across YouTube, including Shorts and in-stream and the feed, plus Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network. That is a much wider footprint, and it is the single biggest reason Demand Gen behaves differently.

The second is creative format. Video Action Campaigns were video-only. Demand Gen takes video, single images, and carousels, and it lets you mix them in one campaign. That opens up placements a pure video buy could never reach, but it also means a video-only advertiser is now competing for attention next to image formats and should think about whether image assets belong in the mix.

The third is aspect ratio emphasis. Because Demand Gen leans into feed and Shorts inventory, vertical video carries more weight than it did in the old campaign. Google recommends a vertical 9:16 asset specifically because it is the format built for YouTube Shorts, and a horizontal-only account will underperform on the surfaces where Demand Gen finds a lot of its cheap reach. If you want the exact numbers, the full Demand Gen video specs cover every aspect ratio and length rule.

Did bidding and budget change?

Bidding got broader. Demand Gen supports Maximize clicks, Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, Target CPA, Target ROAS, Target CPC, and value-based bidding, which is a wider set of controls than the conversion-focused options Video Action Campaigns leaned on. The usual approach is to start on Maximize conversions, let the campaign gather roughly 50 conversions to establish a baseline, then shift to Target CPA or Target ROAS once the data supports it.

On budget, Google's guidance is a budget of at least 10 times your target CPA, and there is no minimum budget requirement for Maximize clicks. If your target CPA is $30, that points at roughly $300 a day to give the campaign enough volume to learn at a reasonable pace. Underfunding it does not make it cheaper, it just makes it slower to stabilize.

What does this mean for reporting?

This is the part that catches teams comparing year over year. A Video Action Campaign result was essentially a YouTube number. A Demand Gen result blends surfaces that bill on different events: YouTube video and image on a CPM basis, Discover video on engaged view, Discover images on a click basis, and Gmail on a teaser click. Your blended cost per result in Demand Gen is not a pure YouTube figure anymore, so putting it side by side with an old Video Action Campaign benchmark is not a like-for-like comparison.

The honest way to handle it is to stop expecting continuity and to rebuild your benchmarks from the new campaign's own data. Pull cost per result by surface and by month from your own exports rather than trusting a legacy number, and give the campaign a full learning period before you judge it. Because the numbers now span YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Display, it helps to have every ad channel and your store in one dashboard so the blended picture is something you can actually read at a glance instead of stitching together five report exports.

What should you do differently now?

Four practical moves. Build vertical 9:16 creative as a first-class asset, not an afterthought, because the feed and Shorts inventory is a big part of what makes Demand Gen worth running. Decide whether image and carousel assets belong in your campaign, since the format is no longer video-only. Reset your budget against the 10 times target CPA guidance rather than carrying over an old daily number. And rebuild your reporting expectations around a multi-surface blend instead of a YouTube-only cost.

The creative shift is the one most teams under-invest in. Demand Gen rewards native vertical video, and producing it in enough volume to test properly is the real constraint. If that is your bottleneck, the Demand Gen video ads workflow turns a product URL into captioned 9:16 clips in several angles per pass, and our guide to YouTube ads cost walks through how the underlying formats bill so the budget math lines up.