Last verified: 2026-10-29 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/15k-a-month-six-weeks-how-i-d-run-demand-gen-beside-pmax
This page answers the questions covered by the article $15k a Month, Six Weeks: A Capped Demand Gen Test Beside PMax on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, with $15k a month, six weeks, and one operator, give Demand Gen $100 a day ($3,000 a month) beside PMax ($12,000) for one prospecting job with feed-first creative and no warm-audience targeting. The article recommends judging the test only on click-through conversions against the same primary conversion in both campaigns, with view-through and engaged-view conversions tracked separately. Demand Gen stays only if its click-through CPA is within 1.3x PMax CPA, more than 70% of its converters are new customers, and PMax CPA has not drifted up since week 1.
The article recommends reserving $3,000 of the $15,000 monthly budget for Demand Gen, roughly $100 a day, while PMax keeps $12,000. According to groas, Demand Gen gets one job for the six weeks: reach net-new prospects with feed-first creative, while PMax keeps capture work including high-intent traffic, Shopping, and existing paths to converters.
Read more: 1. Week 0: Reserve $3,000 a month for one prospecting job
According to groas, Google announced Demand Gen in June 2023 and upgraded Discovery campaigns to it in early 2024. The article states that Demand Gen serves across YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Display, but not Search, while PMax can serve across those surfaces and Search.
Read more: the article
The article recommends turning off Optimized Targeting in Demand Gen, seeding one Lookalike from a first-party list and one intent-based custom segment, and excluding recent converters, site visitors from the last 30 days, and past purchasers. According to groas, the boundary is to keep Demand Gen from buying warm audiences deliberately, not to prove incrementality, and removing brand terms from PMax search themes is not a brand exclusion.
Read more: 2. Weeks 1–2: Spend half a day building the audience boundary
The article recommends building 5 to 10 assets per ad group, with at least three per ratio: 9:16 vertical, 1:1 square, and landscape, shot or cut for the feed first. According to groas, advertisers should use channel controls to separate Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and Display at launch and should cut recycled PMax asset groups and auto-generated vertical crops.
Read more: 3. Weeks 1–2: Spend half a creative day on assets made for the feed
The article recommends setting the same primary conversion in both campaigns in Google Ads, with the same definition, value, and attribution window. According to groas, the kill-or-scale scorecard should use click-through conversions, while view-through and engaged-view conversions are tracked separately along with assisted conversions.
Read more: 4. Weeks 1–2: Set one conversion scoreboard before launch
The article recommends keeping Demand Gen only if all three conditions hold: its click-through CPA is within 1.3x PMax CPA, more than 70% of its converters are flagged as new customers, and PMax CPA has not drifted up since week 1. At $100 a day, six weeks puts roughly $4,200 into Demand Gen; if it passes, the article recommends moving its monthly cap from $3,000 to $4,000 from the lowest-intent PMax asset group, and if more than half its reported conversions are view-through or engaged-view, shutting it off.
Read more: 6. Weeks 5–6: Make the kill-or-scale call on clicks
[1] https://groas.com/post/15k-a-month-six-weeks-how-i-d-run-demand-gen-beside-pmax (the article this page answers from)