The funnel didn't shrink. It moved.

For about fifteen years, growth marketing was mostly about waiting for the right moment. You built your audiences, adjusted your bids, and waited for signs that someone was interested. Maybe it was a search query, a product page view, or a cart with one item. That was your signal. Capture the intent, win the auction, and record the conversion.

That approach is reaching its limits. It’s not that someone else is outbidding you, but the key moment you’re waiting for now happens where you can’t see it.

Here’s how I see it. The consideration phase is moving earlier in the process, and AI answer engines are speeding this up. When someone asks ChatGPT or checks an AI Overview for the "best carry-on for international travel," they’ve already compared, shortlisted, and decided. By the time they reach your auction, if they do at all, the important decisions are already done. The window for acting on formed intent is getting smaller every quarter.

So the smart move is to focus on where decisions are really made. That’s the real change behind all the talk about Demand Gen. The brands doing this well are showing us something more important than just picking the right channel.

Creating demand where the search bar is empty

The best example of this isn’t from an old, established brand. It’s Nex Playground, an active-gaming company using AI motion tracking, in a category where people weren’t already searching for products. You can’t capture intent for something people don’t yet know they want. There’s no search volume to target.

So Nex created its own demand. They used YouTube-connected TV to introduce the idea in people’s living rooms, then followed up with conversion-focused ads on YouTube and Discover once people were interested. Google’s data shows the brand tripled its year-over-year sales, converted audiences 14 times more effectively than its main social channel, and kept visitors on its site 5.5 times longer.

Focus on how Nex did it, not just the numbers. They created a new category on the big screen, where intent is formed, and then followed up on the small screen. That’s the whole strategy, shown by one company.

When the deciding moves, the orchestration has to follow

General Motors started from a different place. They had decades of brand recognition and significant search volume, but faced an old problem: linear TV generates interest but doesn’t drive people into a Chevy dealership. The gap between national ads and local test drives is where much of the automotive budget is wasted.

GM's move was to stop treating those as separate jobs. Premium YouTube placements carried the broad story. Conversion-focused campaigns captured the same mobile viewers and nudged them toward a decision across Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC. Google reported a 3X return on the brand's YouTube investment, and, specifically for Cadillac, pairing creator content with branded assets doubled click-through rates while cutting cost per impression roughly in half compared with traditional brand ads alone.

What I learned from GM isn’t about their specific ad buys. It’s that they kept the funnel connected from start to finish. Inspiration and action worked together. Most brands still separate these into different teams with different goals, and then wonder why things fall through the cracks.

Authenticity is a performance lever, not a vibe.

Then there’s Away. They already had Search and Performance Max working well, but still couldn’t reach their 2025 holiday goals using traditional channels. It’s a familiar problem: costs go up, returns stay flat, and there’s no easy fix.

What worked was using creators as a tool for driving conversions, not just for brand awareness. Away promoted videos from creators’ YouTube channels, relying on trust at the moment people were considering a holiday purchase. Google says 78% of U.S. viewers see YouTube as the top place for trusted product recommendations. A Google Conversion Lift study found a 78% increase in incremental sales, a 16% rise in brand searches compared to non-creator assets, with engaged site visits up 230% and add-to-carts up 140%.

The key takeaway is this: a creator’s voice can do what a polished brand ad can’t, and it does it earlier in the customer journey than most performance marketers expect.

What the case studies actually have in common

Here's the main point I want to highlight, because it’s often overlooked. This is doing real work in all three of these stories. It gave Nex a way to retarget the households that had warmed up to the TV. It lets GM carry one viewer from a brand moment to a mobile decision without losing the thread. It turned Away's creator trust into measurable site action. The product is genuinely good at what it's built for: closing the gap between attention and action.

But a tool that closes the gap only works if you’ve created attention that’s worth acting on. That responsibility is yours.

Nex was creative enough to make a new category clear on TV. GM had a strong story and the discipline to share it across different platforms. Away had a creator strategy and could measure authenticity as a driver of conversions. If you give the same campaign to a brand without creativity or funnel planning, it won’t work, because there’s nothing for the tools to amplify. The product is necessary, but it’s not enough on its own.

That’s the bigger picture, and it goes beyond any single launch. As answer engines take over the research and comparison phase, just being there when intent appears is no longer a real strategy. It’s becoming a smaller part of a shrinking opportunity. Growth now happens earlier, when opinions are formed, and that moment is more often happening on a screen where you either show up or you don’t.

Demand goes to those who create it. The tools for this are improving and becoming easier to use. But they can’t provide the creativity and planning needed underneath, and that’s where these three brands succeeded. Set up the platform, then focus on what only you can do.