The Sneaky Demand Gen Setting That Overrides Targets

Dougie warns about an optimized targeting checkbox in Demand Gen that lets Google override demographic targeting, often skewing audiences.

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Episode notes

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In this episode of the DTC Podcast, host Eric Dyck sits down with Dougie, Head of the Google team at Pilothouse, to unpack how DTC brands can and should use YouTube advertising more strategically — especially when trying to build awareness and capture new demand before peak periods such as BFCM.

Key moments & actionable insights

Why YouTube upper‑funnel campaigns often fail: mis‑targeted audiences, automated overrides, and device‑versus‑user mismatch.
How to set up placement, topic and keyword exclusions to avoid low‑quality traffic (e.g., gaming, ASMR, children’s content).
The importance of checking the actual served demographics in your audience reporting and comparing to your true converter demographics.
How optimising for new customer conversions (instead of all conversions) can yield significant gains (e.g., +50% new customers, +15% share of new customers via Google).
Why narrow geo‑targeting for awareness campaigns can improve measurability of incremental lift.
Why brand‑lift studies may not be the most reliable metric and what alternatives to use (brand search lift, remarketing behaviour, time‑on‑site post‑click).
Distinguishing between YouTube for pure awareness vs YouTube driving demand capture, and how budgets and measurement should differ accordingly.

Whether you’re a performance marketer at a growing DTC brand, or scaling marketing budgets and looking to break through awareness ceilings, this episode gives you tactical controls, audit steps and measurement frameworks to make your YouTube spend work harder.

Timestamps

00:00 – Why most advertisers are targeting the wrong audiences

02:10 – How misaligned content (like kids’ or gaming videos) wastes budget

05:00 – The sneaky Demand Gen setting sabotaging your audience

08:00 – How to force Google to find new customers only

11:40 – Using Audience Insights to audit your actual converters

14:00 – The evolution of YouTube as a top-of-funnel growth channel

17:00 – Why Brand Lift studies can’t be trusted and what to measure instead

18:40 – Narrower geo-targeting for better awareness results

20:00 – Step-by-step audit to fix your top-of-funnel YouTube campaigns

Hashtags

#YouTubeAds #GoogleAds #YouTubeMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #DTC #Pilothouse #MarketingPodcast #AdStrategy #DemandGen #DigitalAdvertising