For an ecommerce business, Demand Gen with a product feed is Shopping in discovery format: catalogue listings on Discover, Gmail and YouTube, chosen by Google according to the person. And the most powerful visual dynamic remarketing on the platform. This lesson closes the module with its set-up and its verdict.
Connecting the feed
Merchant Center linked to the account (as in Shopping); in the Demand Gen campaign, switch on the product feed and choose the whole catalogue or a listing (by label, category, brand). The products must be approved in Merchant Center and meet the Shopping requirements; disapproved ones don't show.
The formats that use the feed
| Format | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Product cards | Listings (image, title, price) chosen for each person, next to your creative or on their own |
| Dynamic carousel | Several swipeable listings; Google decides the order |
| Video + products | Your video with a carousel of products underneath (YouTube) |
| Image + products | Your brand image with catalogue listings |
The combination of your own creative + feed is the one that performs best: the image/video captures attention, the listings convert.
The feed requirements that matter most here
- Images: the Shopping ones (white background) work in the listing,
but in a discovery feed the additional lifestyle images (the
product in use) win: upload them in
additional_image_link; Demand Gen can use them. - Short, readable titles: the card shows few characters; the 150-character Shopping title gets cut off. If you can, use a shorter title via a supplemental feed for this purpose, or make sure the first 40 characters identify the product.
- Price and
sale_price: a visible discount is a click engine in a feed. - Fresh availability: showing an out-of-stock product on Discover is worse than in Shopping (the person wasn't searching; you interrupted them for nothing).
- Labels for listings: new arrivals, best sellers, high margin — whatever makes sense to show to somebody who isn't searching.
Visual dynamic remarketing
With your data (product visitors, cart) and the feed, Demand Gen shows the products each person looked at in visual formats, in the places where they spend their time. It is the modern version of Display's dynamic remarketing and it converts better. The usual rules: lists by behaviour, exclude buyers, capped frequency, and brand creatives alternating with the dynamic ones so you aren't just "the ad that follows me around".
Prospecting with a catalogue
For audiences who don't know you (lookalikes, in-market, custom segments), the feed shows products chosen by Google according to the profile. It works when the catalogue is visually attractive and the price is competitive; it fails with technical or ugly catalogues (there, your own creatives, and the feed only in remarketing).
Judging catalogue sales
The same rules as in Shopping and Demand Gen: ROAS by margin (the margin labels apply here too), click-through conversions, view-based ones separately, and comparison with the account total. A success signal specific to this: sales of products the person had not seen (in remarketing) or from new customers (in prospecting): that is demand created, not recovered.
Typical mistakes
- The whole catalogue in prospecting, with low-margin products taking the spend: use listings by margin.
- A feed with white-background images only: with no lifestyle shots, the feed doesn't "discover" anything.
- The same feed and the same creative in hot remarketing and in prospecting: different messages.
- Judging by ROAS including view-through: Demand Gen + feed is where it inflates most.
💡 Ninja trick: the feed is the same one as in Shopping, so the work from the feeds module (titles, additional images, margin labels, supplemental feeds) pays off three times over: in standard Shopping, in PMax and in Demand Gen. Shopping Ninja measures performance per product by adding up all three; the margin label is what allows all three to be judged on profit.
What you should remember
- Demand Gen with a feed = your catalogue in discovery formats; your own creative + listings is the winning combination.
- Key requirements: lifestyle images, short titles,
sale_price, fresh availability, listings by label. - Visual dynamic remarketing with the usual rules; prospecting with the catalogue only if it is attractive and competitive.
- Judge by margin, on clicks, view-based separately; success = demand created.
That is the end of Module 2 of the Advanced level. Module 3 opens the black box of AI Max: the study «The black box» turned into lessons.