Demand Gen one-click image ads: how to test them for Q4

Short answer: Demand Gen one-click image ads let people tap an image ad on YouTube Shorts or in Gmail and go straight to your landing page. Google announced this on 24 September 2026. On Shorts it needs 9:16 full-bleed images. If you run Demand Gen for an e-shop, add vertical images and test Gmail before the Black Friday peak.

What did Google announce in the September Demand Gen Drop?

Google published the September Demand Gen Drop on its Ads & Commerce blog on 24 September 2026. Four points in it matter for advertisers in Europe:

• One-click image ads on YouTube Shorts and Gmail. A user taps the image and reaches your landing page in a single step. On Shorts, this works with 9:16 full-bleed image ads.
• Gmail in Demand Gen. Google reports that advertisers who add Gmail to their Demand Gen campaigns see their image creatives get on average 40% more conversions at the same ROI (return on investment). That is Google’s global data from February 2026, an average, not a promise for your account.
• Business Agent for YouTube ads. Viewers can ask conversational AI about products next to video ads that use a product feed. It is currently open for sign-up.
• Promoted pins in Google Maps for retail networks and dealerships, shown through affiliate location extensions.

For most e-shops, the first two points are the ones to act on now. The rest of this article is about them.

What does one-click change for an e-shop?

With only one tap between the ad and your page, the ad does less of the selling and the landing page does more. Someone who taps on a Short arrives on a phone, mid-scroll, with very little patience. The page decides whether you paid for a visit or a sale.

So before you upload anything, check the page the ad points to:

• Match image and page. One product in the image, that product’s page as the destination. Do not send a single-product image to the homepage.
• Test the page on a phone. If the product, the price and the buy button are not visible without scrolling, fix that first.
• Look at your consent banner. In the EU, a cookie banner covering half the screen is the first thing a Shorts visitor sees. Keep it compact and make sure Consent Mode is set up, so conversions from people who decline cookies are not simply lost.
• Show the final price. Price with VAT, in the local currency, the same in the image and on the page.
• Keep UTM parameters on the final URL, so GA4 (Google Analytics 4) attributes the visits to the campaign instead of direct traffic.

How to set up 9:16 image ads for Shorts step by step

1. Pick 3-5 products. Bestsellers with healthy margin and stock that will last through December. Paying for clicks to a product that sells out in November is wasted money.
2. Produce vertical images at 9:16, full-bleed. Full-bleed means the image fills the whole frame edge to edge, with no white borders. A square packshot pasted onto a coloured background is not a real vertical creative.
3. Keep the key content in the centre. On Shorts, the player puts buttons and text over parts of the frame. Product and price belong in the middle.
4. One message per image. Product, one benefit, price. If you target Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary, make a language version for each market.
5. Link every image to its own product page with UTM parameters.
6. Give the test its own ad group, so image results do not mix with your video assets and you can read them cleanly.
7. Wait at least 2-3 weeks before you judge it. Demand Gen needs time and conversions to learn.

Should you add Gmail to your Demand Gen campaigns?

Google’s 40% figure is a global average, so treat it as a hypothesis to test, not a result. What decides it is whether Gmail traffic is profitable for you, and that you calculate yourself.

ROAS (return on ad spend) is revenue divided by ad spend. Your break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your gross margin. Illustrative example: say your margin is 40%. Then break-even ROAS is 2.5, which means every €1 of spend has to bring at least €2.50 in revenue just to cover product costs and ads.

This only works if your conversion values are right. If Google Ads counts revenue with VAT and shipping, or counts every purchase at the same value, your ROAS looks better than reality. I explain the fix in how to set up Google Ads conversion value for profit.

Check	YouTube Shorts	Gmail
What changed	One tap from image ad to landing page	One tap from image ad to landing page
Creative requirement	9:16 full-bleed image	Clear product images; check asset requirements in Google Ads before uploading
User context	Scrolling a video feed on a phone	Reading the inbox, on phone or desktop
Landing page priority	Fast mobile product page, price visible at once	Product or category page matching the offer
What to measure	Conversion value divided by spend vs your break-even ROAS	Same, plus share of new vs returning customers
Main risk	Image looks like a banner and gets scrolled past	Paying to reach people you already reach with your own newsletter

What I see in the accounts I run

The most common gap in the Demand Gen setups I audit for e-shops is not budget or bidding. It is the asset library. Image assets are almost always square and landscape, reused from Meta or old Display campaigns. Vertical content exists only as video, if at all.

That means the Shorts inventory has been effectively closed to these advertisers’ image ads. With one-click now available there, the gap matters more than before.

The second pattern: Demand Gen gets judged with the same yardstick as branded Search. Someone compares last-click CPA (cost per acquisition) in GA4 and pauses the campaign after ten days. Demand Gen reaches people earlier in the decision, so I judge it on conversion value in Google Ads and on new customers. Across 500+ campaigns, fixing the creative format has usually paid off sooner than any bid change.

When not to bother with this yet

• Your product pages convert poorly on mobile. One-click sends people there faster. It does not fix the page.
• Your conversion tracking is unreliable. If purchases are double-counted or missing, you cannot tell whether the test worked.
• You cannot yet cover people already searching for your products. Demand Gen creates demand. With a thin budget, Search and Shopping usually come first.
• You only have square packshots and no way to produce real vertical visuals. Stretched or padded images look cheap.
• You want Business Agent but your feed is messy. It works alongside video ads with product feeds, so titles, prices and availability have to be correct first. See my Merchant Center feed checklist before Q4.

What to do first

Open your Demand Gen campaign and check whether you have any 9:16 full-bleed images at all. If not, produce them for 3-5 bestsellers, point each to its product page, and give them their own ad group. In parallel, calculate your break-even ROAS so you can judge the Gmail test on profit, not on clicks.

If you want someone to set this up inside your own Google Ads account, see my PPC specialist services. Email me and I’ll reply within 24 hours.