2026 Power and Utilities Industry Outlook

To evaluate performance, tests should ideally run for 4-6 weeks, though duration depends on budget and goals. Demand Gen is a top and mid-funnel campaign type, where users are targeted at the awareness and interest stages in their purchasing journey. PMAX does not readily provide performance by placement, search term or channel, but offers insights into search themes and audience performance. Performance Max is also a great option if you are trying to expand your reach to different networks such as Display, Shopping, and Google Maps.

Choosing performance based demand generation where to generate your demand is mission-critical, as picking the wrong channels could mean attracting traffic that doesn’t convert or, worse, acquiring the wrong type of customers. For this reason, identifying your target audience and segmenting them before you start generating demand is crucial. Simply put, demand generation uses inbound marketing strategies to get people or businesses excited about your products or services. A well-structured demand generation framework is essential for businesses seeking to drive sustainable results.

The challenge isn’t just tracking metrics and improving your reporting systems—it’s ensuring that your efforts remain aligned with long-term objectives. With the right tools and processes, demand generation becomes a continuous, data-driven effort that ensures long-term success. Regular measurement also provides insights into what works and what doesn’t, ensuring campaigns evolve with business goals and industry trends. More than just reporting, we are committed to being a data-driven partner, offering the tools necessary for smart, agile decision-making. We provide clients with evidence-based insights that drive strategic development and optimize ROI.

For SaaS companies, this can mean co-marketing with integration partners, channel partners, or complementary tools in your category. Partner marketing allows you to reach qualified audiences that are already primed to trust you, because a partner they respect has vouched for your brand. They also build brand authority, support pipeline acceleration for prospects already in the funnel, and create evergreen content assets when repurposed effectively. They also produce reusable content — recordings, clips, and summaries — that can fuel other channels. They attract prospects who are actively seeking to solve a problem, provide a high-trust environment for your brand to demonstrate authority, and generate a pool of engaged, qualified leads. Rather than generating a large volume of leads and filtering down, ABM starts with your most valuable potential customers and works backward.

Case study 3: Nature of the beast demands high budgets

Organizations that embrace this broader view of demand generation – one that includes both lead generation and pipeline acceleration – position themselves to drive more predictable, sustainable growth. Pipeline acceleration represents the often-overlooked component that can dramatically impact results. Lead generation activities typically include form fills, demo requests, content downloads and other actions that indicate immediate purchase intent. It’s a tactical approach centered on identifying prospects who are ready to engage with Sales in the near term.

Intent data is the ability to identify which companies are actively researching solutions in your category right now — before they have raised their hand. Done right it builds authority, earns search traffic, and warms your ICP before they ever enter a sales conversation. This qualitative information is invaluable for personalising outreach at scale and making your campaigns feel genuinely bespoke. It is a structured playbook you can work through in order, starting with the foundations that make everything else more efficient. To learn more about how we can support your demand gen evolution, connect with an Informa TechTarget representative today. Building on our intent data core, we deliver a wide range of service capabilities that help solve the most critical GTM challenges.

As co-founder of a B2B demand generation agency, my colleagues help companies in SaaS and tech develop the right strategy and content to reach their goals. But are people really focusing on the right things? By using them as secondary campaigns, after building a solid foundation of data and conversions, you can optimize your ad performance and effectively reach new audiences. Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns are powerful tools for scaling your Google Ads strategy in 2025.

imperatives: Delivering under pressure

Technology platforms and automation tools allow businesses to scale their demand gen efforts efficiently, reaching larger audiences without a proportional increase in resources. It starts narrow by identifying specific high-value accounts, then expands outreach to engage multiple stakeholders within those accounts. These campaigns can help social advertisers reach up to 3 billion monthly active users across Google's most impactful surfaces. This is an essential search engine optimization (SEO) metric that signals which marketing channels are driving traffic to your website, helping you understand where your target buyers spend the most time.

• However, you retain manual control for other aspects, like which channels your ad should appear on.
• It’s a tactical approach centered on identifying prospects who are ready to engage with Sales in the near term.
• Metadata.io uses AI to automate the execution and optimization of paid demand generation campaigns.
• Whether your goal is improving conversions or expanding business reach, we’ll show you how to leverage both strategies to get the most from your paid media campaigns!
• For B2B businesses, LinkedIn has become one of the most important networks for generating demand.
• The website intelligence that reveals which companies are engaging and turns anonymous traffic into verified, actionable buyer insight.

Demand Gen Pricing

Gong, a revenue intelligence platform, has built its demand generation strategy around original research and data insights, often using proprietary sales analytics to create compelling, shareable content. I’ve seen this “users teach users” motion outperform because the community confers credibility brands can’t buy. They created authentic word-of-mouth and team adoption that starts with enthusiastic individuals. HubSpot pioneered inbound marketing as a demand generation strategy by creating high-value educational content (blog posts, guides, webinars, and free tools) that nurtures potential customers — before asking for anything. Choosing between Performance Max and Demand Gen depends on your business goals, budget, and campaign priorities.

From Marketing Activity to Revenue Impact

As AI adoption broadens, utilities should explore strengthening governance, cybersecurity, and cost-recovery frameworks. Power companies are building computing infrastructure that blends edge, cloud, and on-premises capabilities (figure 2).35 Edge AI—from drones to substation sensors—enables millisecond-level decisions. Resource adequacy rules are expected to start recognizing flexible load paired with four-hour batteries as a dependable capacity resource.

Strategies to maximize ROI across PMAX and Demand Gen:

One hyperscaler, for example, has embedded PJM grid telemetry into its scheduling systems and partnered with two utilities to reduce AI processing workloads during periods of grid stress.34 In 2026, utilities will continue to shift from planning to execution. Utilities are also expanding demand response and flexible loads, turning them from emergency tools into dependable capacity during peaks. In 2025, rising load forecasts and shrinking capacity margins prompted utilities and regulators to emphasize near-term reliability alongside long-term planning. In 2026, the challenge for utilities will be quickly delivering uninterrupted or “firm” capacity to stressed parts of the grid.7 Customer affordability will remain a central pressure point as retail prices continue to rise.

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