Google's June Demand Gen Drop: Video Resizing, Gemini Creative Picks, and New App Measurement

Google published its June 2026 Demand Gen Drop on June 25, introducing three new capabilities that directly affect how ecommerce advertisers build and measure creative campaigns across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. If you are running Demand Gen today, these changes are live or rolling out now, and the video resizing update in particular changes the production math for teams managing creative at scale.

What Is the Google Demand Gen Drop?

Google publishes periodic Demand Gen Drop updates to announce new capabilities rolling into its Demand Gen campaign type. The June 2026 drop introduces expanded video resizing, Gemini-powered creative recommendations, and a new Web to App Acquisition Measurement endpoint. Each of these addresses a real friction point for brands running Demand Gen at volume.

Expanded Video Resizing: What Formats Are Now Supported

Google is adding broader aspect ratio transformations to Demand Gen's video enhancements. The June update adds three specific new transformations:

• Vertical to square
• Vertical to landscape
• Square to landscape

This is significant for ecommerce brands with strong TikTok or Reels-first creative pipelines. Vertical video is increasingly the default production format. Now that content can be automatically adapted to horizontal and square placements within Demand Gen without a separate export, there is less production overhead and fewer reasons to skip a placement because the asset is the wrong shape.

Vertical-first creative can now run across all Demand Gen surfaces without manual reformatting.

Gemini Creative Recommendations: What They Are and When They Fire

When you are selecting image and video assets for a Demand Gen campaign, Gemini will now provide automated recommendations on how to optimize your creative for YouTube specifically. These recommendations surface during the asset selection process, before launch, giving teams a chance to act on the guidance while the campaign is still being built.

This is an important distinction. Most AI creative analysis tools in advertising tell you what went wrong after the campaign runs. Gemini's recommendations in Demand Gen are pre-launch, which changes how creative review fits into the workflow. Teams can use these signals as a quality-assurance layer during setup rather than a post-mortem tool.

Web to App Acquisition Measurement: Why This Matters for Mobile-Heavy Brands

The third update is a measurement expansion. Demand Gen campaigns can now show you exactly how they are driving new app users via installs, not just web conversions. This gives brands a comprehensive view of performance across surfaces and ensures Demand Gen gets credit for app acquisition that was previously invisible in standard reporting.

According to Measured, 72% of incremental conversions from Demand Gen on YouTube come from new customers. The new Web to App measurement helps brands track whether those new customers are converting on web, in-app, or both, closing a reporting gap that has made it harder to justify Demand Gen spend for app-first ecommerce brands.

72% of incremental conversions from Demand Gen on YouTube come from new customers. Now you can track where they land.

What Should Ecommerce Advertisers Do Right Now?

Three actions to take this week:

1. Audit your current Demand Gen creative library for aspect ratios. With vertical-to-landscape and vertical-to-square now supported, you may be sitting on creative that can expand to new placements automatically. Check which assets are vertical and enable video enhancements for those campaigns.
2. Use Gemini recommendations as a pre-launch quality-assurance step. When building or refreshing Demand Gen campaigns, treat Gemini's asset recommendations as part of your launch checklist. If the system flags an asset, that is signal. Run a test with the optimized version before pushing live.
3. Enable Web to App Acquisition Measurement if you have an app. Go into your Demand Gen campaign settings and confirm app install tracking is connected. This is the prerequisite for the new measurement endpoint to work, and without it you are flying blind on app acquisition attribution from Demand Gen.

Frequently Asked Questions

Want Help Getting More From Google's Demand Gen?

Demand Gen is evolving fast, and the brands that adapt their creative workflows to match these updates will see it in their ROAS. Common Thread Collective helps 7-9 figure ecommerce brands build media strategies that keep pace with platform changes and convert them into real growth.

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