August 12, 2026
Google Ads is making another significant change to its campaign structure. Google is phasing out standalone Display campaign types and automatically migrating Display campaigns to its newer Demand Gen campaign type that distributes your ads across a broader inventory.
The news has been confusing to some of our customers. Rest assured, Google is not removing our ability to help your ads appear on the Google Display Network. Display inventory is still accessible through Performance Max campaigns. What Google is eliminating over time is the ability to have a standalone campaign that only shows your ads in the Google Display Network.
Google began rolling out tools in June 2026 that allow advertisers and agencies to migrate existing Display campaigns into Demand Gen. Eventually, new standalone Display campaigns will no longer be available, and Google says it expects the transition to be completed by 2027.
This is part of a much broader evolution happening throughout Google Ads.
What is clear is that Google has steadily been moving advertisers away from campaigns that require them to manually choose exactly where and how ads run. Instead, Google increasingly wants advertisers to provide the objective, creative, audience information, and conversion data, and then allow its AI to determine where advertising dollars are most likely to produce results.
Performance Max is a good example. A single Performance Max campaign can place ads across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps and use Google's AI to optimize the campaign to achieve what advertisers designate as conversion goals.
Demand Gen approaches the problem somewhat differently. It is designed to help advertisers reach and influence potential customers while they are watching, browsing, and discovering content across YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network.
By moving Display into Demand Gen, Google can combine traditional Display inventory with these additional visual placements while giving its AI more opportunities to decide where an advertiser can most effectively reach a particular audience.
I think something is going on beyond the talking points. Google could have decided to automatically migrate campaigns from Display to Performance Max, but they didn’t. My theory is that they can’t predict how AI will impact traditional search or how search ads will fit into future AI results. It seems more future-proof to make advertisers less reliant on search.
Google reports that advertisers adding Google Display Network inventory to Demand Gen have seen an average 9.5% increase in ROI, although we don’t see direct evidence of this in multifamily campaigns. Performance Max campaigns outperform Demand Gen’s ability to generate direct conversions.
This is probably the most important part of the announcement.
Google isn't eliminating Display ads. It's changing the campaign types you use to buy them and forcing you to blend your media buy with additional placements.
Performance Max already includes Display Network inventory. Demand Gen also includes Google Display Network alongside YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and other placements.
For apartment marketers, that means we're not suddenly losing the ability to put apartment ads in front of prospects as they browse the web.
But with this change, our team has had to rethink which campaign type makes the most sense for our multifamily clients.
At Respage, we have already moved most of our clients' advertising dollars away from traditional Display campaigns.
For the small number of standalone Display campaigns we still manage, we're evaluating and transitioning them based on what each campaign is actually intended to accomplish.
When the primary objective is lead generation (which it is 98% of the time), we're moving that budget toward Performance Max.
Performance Max is built around conversion goals and can determine whether Display, Search, YouTube, or another Google channel presents the best opportunity to generate a lead or a scheduled tour. Rather than reserving a budget specifically for Display advertising, we're giving Google more flexibility to find the renter most likely to convert.
That makes sense when the ultimate objective is measurable apartment leads and applications.
There is another important use case.
Some customers want to reach significantly more prospects at the top of the marketing funnel. These customers are typically at the beginning of a lease-up or have income-based apartments with a very tight income band.
That's when we take a look at adding a Demand Gen campaign with a small budget.
Demand Gen is specifically designed to reach people while they are consuming and discovering content rather than necessarily searching for something like an apartment at that exact moment. Google describes Demand Gen as a way to reach customers while they're streaming, scrolling, and shopping, and says that a large share of Demand Gen conversions come from consumers who had not recently interacted with the advertiser through Google Search.
That makes it particularly interesting for awareness and prospecting campaigns.
But it also requires marketers to understand something we've all been saying about upper-funnel advertising for a long time:
Someone may see an apartment ad today and click through to the site but leave without contacting you or scheduling a tour.
Three weeks later, that same person may search for apartments, see your ad, visit the website, leave again, see a retargeting ad, and finally submit a lead.
Your reporting may attribute that first-touch conversion to Search or retargeting. But the Demand Gen campaign may have actually been the first touch. Unfortunately, multifamily CRMs weren’t built to track anonymous visitors (probably because adding this tech raises costs and the price).
That's why we're using Demand Gen selectively for customers who want greater top-of-funnel exposure and understand that its impact may show up downstream and be harder to measure than a neat list of last-click conversions directly attributed to a Search or Performance Max campaign.
That's really the larger story behind this change.
For years, advertisers thought about Google Ads largely in terms of channels:
Google is increasingly organizing advertising around what you're trying to accomplish instead.
Need to generate apartment leads now? Search and Performance Max may make the most sense.
Want to introduce your property to more potential renters and build an audience you can influence later? Demand Gen should be part of the strategy.
Long story short, the good news is the Display Network hasn't disappeared, but it has been relegated to being just one component of Google advertising reach. We’ve been migrating most of our clients' campaigns to Performance Max already (which is working better than pure Search campaigns for most properties).
If you or your agency haven’t gotten Performance Max to work, prepare to take a hit when your Display campaigns move to Demand Gen. Give us a call if you’d like to hear how we get Performance Max to work reliably.
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