Demand Gen lets you pick Shorts only, and report on it

Demand Gen had one persistent objection from experienced buyers: you could not tell which surface delivered. Your ads ran across YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Display, the results came back as one number, and the answer to whether that was YouTube or Gmail was a shrug.

That is fixed. Channel controls now let you select surfaces, including YouTube Shorts on its own, and reporting splits by format. There is also a Target CPC bidding option alongside the existing choices.

Why Shorts-only is the interesting one

Shorts is a different product from in-stream YouTube, not a different aspect ratio. The viewing behaviour, the skip pattern, the sound expectation and the pacing are all different. An ad that works in a 15-second in-stream slot before a how-to video will usually die in a Shorts feed, because the person is scrolling and your first second has to earn the second one.

Being able to buy Shorts on its own means you can produce for it properly instead of hoping a repurposed landscape cut survives the crop. Vertical, sound-on but readable without it, the point made immediately, no slow build.

It also means you can test whether Shorts is where your audience is at all. For some categories it clearly is. For others the traffic is cheap and worthless, and until now that was hidden inside a blended cost per acquisition.

Format-split reporting changes the argument

The value of surface-level reporting is not the optimisation. It is the conversation.

When Demand Gen reported as one blob, the internal debate about whether it worked was unresolvable, so it usually resolved on whoever argued hardest. With format splits you can put the numbers on the table: this much spend on Discover produced this, Gmail produced that, Shorts produced the other. Some of those will be embarrassing. That is the point.

Expect at least one surface in your account to be quietly consuming a third of the budget and returning very little. It is nearly always the one nobody thought about.

Target CPC and what it is for

Target CPC is a traffic-buying strategy, not a conversion strategy. Use it when the job is genuinely reach and site visits, such as a launch, an awareness push, or an audience-building phase before a retargeting campaign has anything to retarget.

Do not use it as a fallback because your conversion volume is too low for Target CPA. Low conversion volume is a data problem, and buying cheaper clicks does not solve it. If you cannot feed a conversion-based strategy, fix the conversion signal first, which usually means sending intermediate sales stages back from your CRM.

The cost of narrowing

Restricting surfaces is not free, and this is the part that gets skipped.

Every surface you switch off raises the pressure on the ones you leave on. Fewer available impressions means higher CPMs on the remaining inventory. It also means less data flowing into the bid strategy, which slows learning, particularly on accounts that were already thin.

The rule of thumb: narrow when you have a specific creative reason, not as a default hygiene move. If you have produced Shorts-native creative, buy Shorts. If you are just uncomfortable with Display, understand that switching it off will cost you volume and probably raise your cost per acquisition before it lowers it.

A sensible sequence

1. 1.Run all surfaces on for a full learning period with one creative set. Get a baseline.
2. 2.Read the format split. Note which surfaces carry spend and which carry results.
3. 3.Produce native creative for the one surface that looks most promising. Not repurposed. Native.
4. 4.Run a separate campaign restricted to that surface with the native creative, alongside the original. Now you are testing surface and creative fit together, which is the real question.
5. 5.Keep the all-surfaces campaign running. It is your control and your volume.

What has not changed

Demand Gen still needs decent creative volume, and it still punishes accounts that upload one image set and leave it for six months. The channel controls give you sharper instruments. They do not reduce the amount of work.

Buy the surface you have made something for, and nothing else.