Google Retires Display Ads As Standalone Campaign Type

Google is ending Display Ads as a standalone campaign type and moving the product inside Demand Gen. Google Ads has run Display as its own campaign type for roughly two decades, providing a separate buying interface for the Google Display Network, the company's network of more than two million third-party websites, apps, and video properties outside its owned surfaces.

In a blog post, the company says under the change, GDN becomes an inventory channel inside Demand Gen rather than a campaign type of its own. A Google-provided migration tool will move existing Display campaigns to the new structure, with the transition expected to complete by 2027. The image below shows Google’s approved migration timeline.

What Changes for Advertisers

Advertisers who want to keep delivery on GDN only can still do that. Google says GDN-only buying is supported through Demand Gen's channel controls, so advertisers are not being forced into YouTube, Discover, Gmail, or Maps inventory if those surfaces are not part of the plan. Advertisers who do want to extend beyond GDN can turn those surfaces on from inside the same Demand Gen campaign.

The operational lift sits with account teams. Campaign structures, naming conventions, reporting views, conversion attribution, and creative specs all need to be mapped from Display's object model into Demand Gen's. Playbooks built around the standalone Display campaign type, including bidding strategies, audience setups, and creative workflows, will need to be rewritten against Demand Gen's conventions.

How Advertisers Can Migrate Display Ads to Demand Gen

Advertisers looking to move existing Google Display Ads campaigns into Demand Gen can follow a set of in-platform steps within Google Ads.

• To begin, go to the Campaigns section from the main Campaigns menu. From there, use the filter option above the campaigns table and open the Attributes dropdown. Select Campaign type, then tick Display and apply the filter to isolate display campaigns.
• Once the relevant campaigns appear, select the checkbox next to each campaign you want to migrate. After selecting them, open the Edit dropdown and choose Upgrade to Demand Gen.
• At this stage, Google Ads will show a migration alert explaining what will transfer. This includes campaign settings and learning signals being moved into the new structure. The budget will also carry over, although any spend on the same day of migration will not be counted.
• After reviewing the message, click Apply to complete the process.

Google notes that advertisers can migrate multiple campaigns at once. However, moving more than 100 campaigns in a single batch is not recommended within the current system.

The End of a Standalone Product Line

The move closes the Display campaign type's run as an independent product. Future GDN-relevant features and any updates announced at events such as Google Marketing Live will ship inside Demand Gen rather than as Display updates. The most recent standalone Display product expansion, which extended Display Ads to more connected-TV networks, will be the last of its kind before the consolidation completes.

The change continues a multi-year pattern of Google collapsing distinct campaign types into AI-led, audience-based umbrella products. Discovery Ads and Video Action Campaigns were absorbed into Demand Gen earlier, and Performance Max consolidated several other campaign types before that. The direction was reinforced at this year's Google Marketing Live, where Google laid out further moves to centralize ads workflows around Gemini and AI-led optimization.

The pattern is not unique to Google. Meta has been steadily moving advertisers from manual campaigns to Advantage+, and the broader ad ecosystem is shifting buyers from placement-led buys to objective-led, AI-optimized ones. With Display now folded into Demand Gen, the standalone display campaign, once a foundational unit of digital media buying, is exiting Google Ads as a category.