Most ecommerce brands will reset their Demand Gen learning before peak. Here's what Google says to do instead

Google recently ran a webinar on Demand Gen, "Create and Convert Demand this Peak Season", setting out how to structure campaigns ahead of peak. Here are the main takeaways, and why most brands aren't set up to benefit from them yet.

Bidding and budget: the learning phase problem

The biggest mistake Google flagged was advertisers resetting campaign learning right before the busiest trading period of the year. Swapping creative, changing budgets overnight and restructuring live campaigns all trigger relearning at the worst possible moment. It's the equivalent of sending the algorithm back to school the week before its exams.

Google's advice is to scale budgets in phases, starting six weeks out, with set rules on how much to increase, how often, and when to batch changes so the campaign only relearns once.

Campaigns also need to hit a daily budget threshold before you loosen your bid strategy: 10 times your target CPA, or at least £100 a day on Maximise Conversions.

As a benchmark, Demand Gen should account for between 8% and 20% of your total Google performance spend. If you're nowhere near that, there's likely room to grow.

Product feeds: the biggest untapped lever

Google says a well optimised feed can lift conversions by up to 30%. You need at least 50 approved products first, and most brands aren't writing product titles the way the algorithm prioritises them.

Google also highlighted two technical changes that very few advertisers have enabled:

1. Checkout links: a feed level change that takes users straight to cart, skipping the landing page. Google quoted an 11% uplift in conversion value.

2. Google tag gateway: a server side improvement to signal quality, which Google says can increase tracked conversions by 20%.

3. Combined, that's an advantage most of your competitors haven't switched on.

Audiences: a two phase approach

- Before peak: go broad. Lean into interest and in market signals, give the algorithm your first party data lists and let optimised targeting do the discovery work.

- During peak: shift towards high intent segments, specifically CRM lists, cart abandoners and Customer Match.

- There's also a structural rule for isolating audiences at ad group level, which is the difference between knowing what's working and guessing. Most accounts we audit don't follow it.

The takeaway

Q4 isn't won in November. It's won by the brands that get the foundations right now: feed structure, tag setup, campaign structure and budget phasing. Do that, and the algorithm is already working in your favour when peak arrives.

The catch is that most of this is technical. It sits across Google Merchant Center, Google Tag Manager, feed management and campaign structure, and it needs setting up correctly to deliver the gains Google describes.

That's the work we do every day for our ecommerce and lead generation clients.

If you're reading this thinking "we probably haven't got half of this in place", you're in good company, and it's fixable. Get in touch and we'll review your setup before peak arrives.

Source: Google Ads, "Create and Convert Demand this Peak Season" webinar, September 2026