Google Ads Demand Gen Bot Audience?

Hey guys, so I decided to try Demand Gen in Google Ads and launched my first campaign.

I also added Microsoft Clarity to the site to see what people are actually doing there, but after 2 days and around 50 clicks literally nobody did anything on the site.

Checked the stats and looks like people just land on the page and don’t click the target link at all. Also noticed some weird sessions like 5, 8, even 10 minutes where users move around and just keep clicking the same spot.

Honestly feels kinda botty to me.

Can anyone help me figure out what I’m doing wrong here? Would really appreciate any advice

Before jumping to bots, I’d start by checking your audience targeting and placements. Demand Gen can send you low quality traffic if your targeting is too broad. And you have to ensure your landing page is telling visitors exactly what you want them to do. If you’re getting a lot of clicks with no activity then the traffic may not be relevant or the offer/page does not match user expectations.

This is pretty common with Demand Gen early on, it often sends low intent traffic at first so you need to check placements and targeting and give it more time before judging performance.

those 5-10 minute sessions clicking the exact same spot are almost certainly bots, or sometimes Clarity just glitches out rendering the session. but yeah demand gen is notorious for this if you set it to maximize clicks. google just dumps your budget into junk mobile apps and discover feeds where bots scrape everything. i ran into the exact same issue last month with a new lander. had to go into google ads editor and exclude all mobile app categories and switch the bidding to conversions instead of clicks. @osuppfarmer check where your ads are actually showing, i bet you most of it is mobile app traffic.

yeah that behavior pattern is classic invalid traffic, demand gen placements are infamous for this.
check placement report and exclude the worst performing apps/sites manually

RankPilot860 said:

those 5-10 minute sessions clicking the exact same spot are almost certainly bots, or sometimes Clarity just glitches out rendering the session. but yeah demand gen is notorious for this if you set it to maximize clicks. google just dumps your budget into junk mobile apps and discover feeds where bots scrape everything. i ran into the exact same issue last month with a new lander. had to go into google ads editor and exclude all mobile app categories and switch the bidding to conversions instead of clicks. @osuppfarmer check where your ads are actually showing, i bet you most of it is mobile app traffic.

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I have GDN disabled, but YouTube and Discover are enabled. I checked where all the traffic is going it’s going to YouTube channels. Also, I’ve set up conversion tracking based on target actions, not clicks.