The State of Demand Gen: Why Delays are Hurting Advertisers
In the fast-paced world of digital advertising, timing is everything. For performance marketers and brand specialists, the ability to launch a campaign and see it go live within a few hours is a baseline expectation. However, a significant bottleneck has emerged within the Google Ads ecosystem. Demand Gen campaigns, the AI-powered successor to Discovery ads, are currently experiencing unprecedented review delays that are leaving advertisers in a state of limbo.
Reports from across the industry suggest that ads are being held in the “Under Review” status for seven days or longer. For a platform that typically processes creative approvals within 24 to 48 hours, a week-long delay represents a major disruption to marketing workflows, seasonal promotions, and overall campaign momentum. This issue isn’t just a minor inconvenience; it is a fundamental breakdown in the agility that digital platforms are supposed to provide.
What is Happening with Demand Gen Reviews?
The issue was brought to the forefront by Matthew Skelton, a senior PPC specialist, who noted a recurring pattern of delays across various client accounts. Unlike typical review lags that might be triggered by a specific policy violation or a flagged keyword, these delays seem to be systemic. Campaigns are sitting idle with no feedback, no “disapproved” status, and no clear indication of what is causing the holdup.
What makes this situation particularly frustrating is the inconsistency across the Google Ads suite. While Demand Gen campaigns are stalling, other campaign types like Search and Performance Max (PMax) appear to be functioning normally. Advertisers report that Search ads are still being approved within the standard timeframe, suggesting that the bottleneck is isolated specifically to the Demand Gen infrastructure.
Google’s Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin, has officially acknowledged the problem. According to Marvin, the delay is specifically affecting image ads within Demand Gen campaigns. While Google has confirmed that their engineering teams are working on a resolution, no definitive timeline for a fix has been provided. This leaves advertisers with the difficult task of managing client expectations without a clear end date in sight.
Understanding the Importance of Demand Gen
To understand why these delays are so damaging, it is important to look at the role Demand Gen plays in a modern marketing strategy. Launched as an evolution of Discovery ads, Demand Gen is designed to capture consumer interest across Google’s most visual and immersive surfaces, including YouTube, Shorts, Discover, and Gmail.
Unlike Search ads, which target users who are already looking for a specific product or service, Demand Gen focuses on “creating” demand. It uses high-quality imagery and video to find new audiences who may not yet be aware of a brand. It is an essential tool for top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel marketing. Because these campaigns rely heavily on visual assets and creative testing, any delay in the review process stops the entire optimization cycle in its tracks.
The Role of Creative Iteration
Demand Gen is built on the principle of creative excellence. Advertisers frequently swap out images and videos to see which combinations drive the highest engagement. In a healthy environment, a marketer might upload five different creative variations on a Monday, see which ones are performing by Wednesday, and iterate again by Friday. With a seven-day review delay, this cycle is completely broken. Marketers are forced to wait an entire week just to see if their initial “test” is even allowed to run, effectively killing any chance of rapid optimization.
The Technical Side: Why Demand Gen is Different
One might wonder why Demand Gen is suffering while Search ads remain unaffected. The answer likely lies in the complexity of the review process for different ad formats. Search ads are primarily text-based, making them relatively simple for Google’s automated systems to scan for policy violations. Even with the introduction of complex AI, text remains a lightweight data format.
Demand Gen, however, is a different beast. It relies on a combination of high-resolution images, videos, and headlines. These assets require more robust scanning to ensure they comply with Google’s community standards, copyright laws, and aesthetic requirements. The review process for Demand Gen involves more “heavy lifting” from Google’s machine learning models. If there is a glitch in the specific algorithm responsible for processing visual assets for Demand Gen, it creates a backlog that doesn’t necessarily spill over into the text-heavy Search environment.
The Impact of AI Overload
As Google continues to integrate more generative AI features into the Ads dashboard—such as the ability to generate backgrounds or enhance images directly within the UI—the strain on the review systems has likely increased. Every time a new AI feature is added to the “front end” of the advertiser experience, the “back end” review systems must be updated to handle that new type of content. It is possible that the current delays are a symptom of the system struggling to keep pace with the rapid deployment of new AI-driven creative tools.
The Ripple Effect on Marketing Budgets and ROAS
For many businesses, digital advertising is their primary source of revenue. When a campaign is stuck in review for a week, it’s not just “waiting”—it’s costing money. Here is how the delay impacts the bottom line:
Missed Seasonal Opportunities
Retailers and e-commerce brands often run time-sensitive promotions. Whether it is a weekend flash sale, a holiday-specific event, or a product launch, timing is non-negotiable. If a brand plans a “Three-Day Only” sale and the ads take seven days to clear the review process, the entire campaign is a total loss. The window of opportunity closes before the ads even have a chance to reach the audience.
Pacing and Budget Management
Advertisers work with monthly budgets. If a campaign is intended to spend $10,000 over 30 days but sits idle for the first seven days of the month, the system will often try to “make up” for that lost time once it finally goes live. This can lead to aggressive spending in the latter half of the month, often at a higher cost-per-acquisition (CPA), as the algorithm rushes to fulfill the budget requirements. This volatility makes it nearly impossible to maintain a stable Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Client Relations and Trust
For agencies managing these campaigns, the situation is particularly delicate. Clients often don’t understand the inner workings of Google’s review algorithms; they simply see that their ads aren’t running and their revenue is dipping. When an agency has to explain that the ads have been “stuck” for a week with no explanation, it can strain the professional relationship and lead to a loss of trust in the platform itself.
Strategies for Dealing with Review Delays
While the primary fix must come from Google’s engineering team, there are several steps advertisers can take to mitigate the impact of these delays and perhaps navigate the system more effectively.
Plan Further in Advance
The most immediate solution, though perhaps the most difficult to implement, is to extend the lead time for all Demand Gen campaigns. If you have a campaign launching on the 15th of the month, aim to have all creatives uploaded and submitted for review by the 1st. By building in a 14-day buffer, you can account for the current seven-day delay while still leaving room for any actual policy issues that might need addressing.
Avoid “Tinkering” with Ads in Review
A common mistake made by frustrated advertisers is to constantly edit an ad that is stuck in review. Every time you make a change—even a small typo fix in a headline—the ad is resubmitted to the bottom of the queue. If your Demand Gen ad is “Under Review,” the best course of action is to leave it alone. Touching it only restarts the clock, which could turn a seven-day wait into a fourteen-day wait.
Utilize the Policy Manager
Check the “Policy Manager” section within your Google Ads account regularly. Sometimes, an ad isn’t just “stuck”—it might be caught in a “soft” disapproval where the system is waiting for an appeal. If there is an option to appeal the review status, use it sparingly. However, if the status is a generic “Under Review,” an appeal may not be possible until a formal decision is made.
Diversify Campaign Types
Since Search and Performance Max campaigns seem to be unaffected by this specific glitch, consider shifting a portion of your budget into these formats temporarily. If your Demand Gen “Top of Funnel” strategy is stalled, you might increase your “Mid-Funnel” Search efforts to ensure that traffic and conversions don’t drop off entirely. This diversification ensures that your entire account doesn’t go dark just because one campaign type is failing.
Communicating the Issue to Stakeholders
Transparency is key when dealing with platform-wide issues. If you are an in-house marketer or an agency lead, you should proactively communicate this issue to your stakeholders. Frame the conversation around the fact that this is a documented, platform-wide issue confirmed by Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin. By showing that the problem is external and affecting the entire industry, you can shift the focus from “why isn’t this working” to “how are we pivoting to maintain performance.”
The Future of Demand Gen and Google Ads
Despite these current growing pains, Demand Gen remains a cornerstone of Google’s future roadmap. The shift toward AI-driven, multi-surface advertising is inevitable as consumer behavior continues to move toward short-form video and personalized feeds. However, for these AI systems to be viable for the world’s largest brands, the infrastructure supporting them must be bulletproof.
The current review delays serve as a reminder that as much as we rely on automation and AI, the human and technical infrastructure behind these tools is still prone to error. As Google works to fix the specific issues affecting Demand Gen image ads, advertisers should remain vigilant, stay informed through official channels, and always have a “Plan B” for their digital ad spend.
For now, the recommendation is clear: expect delays, submit your creatives as early as possible, and keep a close eye on your campaign status. While Google has not yet announced a completion date for the fix, the acknowledgment of the problem is the first step toward a resolution. In the meantime, the community of PPC experts continues to share data and insights, proving once again that in the world of SEO and digital ads, the only constant is change.