Most Brisbane business owners I talk to are currently terrified of their Google Ads dashboard. I don’t blame them. Google has spent the last two years aggressively pushing 'automated' solutions that feel less like marketing and more like a slot machine where the house always wins.
Enter Demand Gen campaigns.
On paper, they’re brilliant. They combine YouTube, Shorts, Discover, and Gmail into one visual powerhouse. But here is the reality I’m seeing on the ground from Milton to the Gold Coast: most agencies are setting these up, hitting 'Go', and wondering why they’re getting thousands of views but zero actual phone calls.
If you treat Demand Gen like a standard Search campaign, you’re going to go broke. If you treat it like a 'set and forget' automated miracle, you’re already losing. Let’s talk about how to actually make this format work before you burn through next month's budget.
The 'Mid-Funnel' Myth That’s Costing You Money
The industry loves to call Demand Gen a 'mid-funnel' tool. I hate that term. It’s a convenient excuse for marketers to say, "Well, it didn't drive sales, but it built brand awareness."
In the current Australian economy, with interest rates where they are and consumer spending tightening, 'awareness' doesn't pay the lease on a warehouse in Pinkenba. You need intent.
The biggest mistake I see is businesses using Demand Gen to target everyone. They treat it like a TV ad. Instead, you should be using it to squeeze the life out of your existing data. If you aren't feeding your Demand Gen campaigns high-quality first-party data—like your actual customer list or people who have spent more than two minutes on your site—you are essentially paying Google to show your ads to bots and bored teenagers. This is exactly why Google's smart bidding can become a liability; it optimizes for the easiest click, not the most profitable customer.
Quick Win 1: The 'Shorts' First Creative Pivot
Last month, we looked at a client in the home improvement space who was frustrated with their Demand Gen performance. They had beautiful, high-production 30-second landscape videos. They looked like something you’d see on Channel 7.
They were failing miserably.
Why? Because Demand Gen is dominated by YouTube Shorts and the Discover feed. A polished, horizontal corporate video looks like an ad. And people hate ads.
The Fix: We told them to put away the professional camera and grab an iPhone. We filmed a 15-second vertical clip of a lead installer explaining one specific problem they solved for a customer in Indooroopilly. It was raw, it had captions, and it looked like a native piece of content.
The Result: Click-through rates tripled overnight.
Stop trying to be a filmmaker. Be a problem solver. If your creative doesn't look like it belongs in a social feed, people will swipe past it before your logo even fades in. If your ad does manage to get them to click, the worst thing you can do is send them to a generic homepage. You've worked hard to get that attention; don't ruin it by sending traffic to ghost towns where there’s no clear path to conversion.
Quick Win 2: Kill the 'All-In' Audience Strategy
Google will tell you to use 'Optimized Targeting'. This is Google-speak for "Let us spend your money wherever we want."
For a small to medium business in Queensland, this is a death sentence. You don't have the budget to 'train' Google’s AI on the entire Australian population.
Instead, try this: The Lookalike Layer Cake. 1. The Base: Upload your last 12 months of actual purchasers (emails and phone numbers). 2. The Middle: Create a 2% Lookalike audience based on those purchasers. 3. The Topping: Add a layer of 'In-Market' segments that actually make sense.
By narrowing the field, you give the algorithm a much smaller, much 'warmer' haystack to find the needles in. I’ve seen this shift take a campaign from a $150 cost-per-acquisition down to $45 in less than three weeks.
Quick Win 3: The Gmail 'Hidden' Hack
Demand Gen includes Gmail ads, but most people forget they exist. When was the last time you looked at how your creative appears in an inbox?
In Gmail, your 'Headline' is essentially an email subject line. If it’s boring, it won't get opened. If it's too 'salesy', it goes to the bin.
I’ve found that using localized headlines works wonders. For a B2B client, instead of "Cheap Office Supplies," we used "Free Delivery to Brisbane CBD Businesses This Week." The specificity creates urgency.
Side note: This is where most agencies completely miss the mark. They use the same headline for a YouTube Short as they do for a Gmail ad. That’s lazy marketing, and it’s why your CPCs are likely higher than they should be. It’s all part of the broader lead cost crisis where businesses are paying more for lower-quality attention because they aren't tailoring the message to the placement.
Why Your 'Success' Metrics are Probably Lying to You
Here is a frustrating truth: Google loves to claim credit for everything. In Demand Gen, you’ll see 'View-through conversions.' This means someone saw your ad, didn't click, but later bought something.
Google will count that as a win for the ad. I call BS.
While there is some value in brand touchpoints, you need to look at Engaged-view conversions. This measures people who watched at least 10 seconds of your video and then converted. That is a much more honest metric of whether your creative is actually doing the heavy lifting.
I remember a campaign we took over for a local tourism operator. Their previous agency was reporting a 10x ROI. When we looked under the hood, 90% of those were view-through conversions from people who were already going to book anyway. We cut the fluff, focused on click-based conversions, and suddenly the 'real' ROI became clear. It’s painful to see, but you can't run a business on fake numbers.
The 'Goldilocks' Budgeting Rule
One of the biggest mistakes I see with Demand Gen is underfunding the campaign. Because it’s an AI-driven beast, it needs data to learn. If you give it $10 a day, it’s like trying to teach a dog to sit by giving it one microscopic crumb of a treat every three days. The dog (the algorithm) just gets confused and gives up.
However, you also shouldn't dump $500 a day into it right away.
The Rule: Set your daily budget to at least 15x your target cost-per-action (CPA). If you want a lead to cost you $20, you need to be spending at least $300 a day on that campaign. If you can't afford that, don't run Demand Gen. Stick to Search until you have the margins to play the visual game. It’s better to do one thing perfectly than three things poorly.
Conclusion: Take Back the Steering Wheel
Google Ads in 2026 is a battle between your bottom line and Google’s desire for 'liquidity' (which is just a fancy word for them taking your money). Demand Gen is a powerful tool, but only if you are the one in control.
Stop using the stock images. Stop trusting 'Optimized Targeting' blindly. And for heaven’s sake, stop measuring success based on 'impressions.'
Focus on your first-party data, create vertical videos that actually look human, and be ruthless with your metrics.
If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. But in a crowded Brisbane market, the businesses that do the work are the ones that survive the 'automated' purge.
Ready to stop guessing and start growing? At Local Marketing Group, we don't just 'run ads'—we engineer growth. If you’re sick of seeing your budget disappear into the Google void, let’s have a real conversation about what’s actually working in the QLD market right now.