In this article, the newage. team, a certified Google Marketing Platform partner, explains how Display & Video 360 works, what business goals brands use it for, and how it differs from Google Ads. We’ll also explore DV360’s key capabilities, including programmatic media buying, access to premium inventory, advanced audience targeting, automation, and analytics.
While DV360 shares some similarities with Google Ads, the platform offers far more advanced capabilities for display advertising, automation, and large-scale media campaigns. That’s why DV360 is most commonly used by brands, agencies, and advertisers that need greater control over reach, analytics, and inventory quality.
What Is DV360 in Simple Terms?
Display & Video 360 is Google’s platform for running display and video advertising through programmatic media buying. In simple terms, DV360 helps brands automatically purchase ad placements across thousands of websites, mobile apps, YouTube, Connected TV, and other digital platforms from a single interface.
Unlike Google Ads, DV360 is designed for larger and more complex advertising campaigns. The platform provides greater control over:
- audiences;
- ad placements;
- ad formats;
- campaign optimization;
- analytics and performance measurement.
With DV360, advertisers can run campaigns not only within Google’s ecosystem but also access premium inventory, direct publisher deals, mobile apps, audio advertising, and hundreds of programmatic platforms.
In practice, Display & Video 360 combines multiple capabilities within a single interface:
- campaign management;
- audience management;
- campaign automation;
- programmatic media buying;
- advanced analytics.
That’s why the platform is widely used by large brands and agencies running video-first, omnichannel, or performance-driven campaigns.
Who Is DV360 Best Suited For?
Display & Video 360 is most commonly used by brands and companies running large-scale media campaigns that require greater control over advertising, audiences, and analytics. The platform is especially valuable for video-first, omnichannel, and awareness campaigns where broad reach, premium inventory, and advanced optimization play a key role.
DV360 is often chosen by large brands, e-commerce businesses, fintech companies, mobile apps, and agencies actively working with programmatic advertising. At the same time, for smaller local campaigns or simpler ad launches, Google Ads can often be a more practical and straightforward solution.
Where Does DV360 Advertising Appear?
Display & Video 360 allows advertisers to run campaigns far beyond the standard Google Display Network. Through the platform, advertisers can buy media inventory across thousands of websites, mobile apps, YouTube, Connected TV, and premium platforms via programmatic auctions and direct deals.
Ads launched through DV360 can appear on:
- YouTube;
- mobile apps;
- news, entertainment, and niche websites;
- Connected TV and OTT platforms;
- audio streaming platforms;
- premium publishers through direct deals.
One of DV360’s key advantages is access to a large number of SSPs, ad exchanges, and premium inventory sources. This allows brands to scale media campaigns more efficiently while maintaining greater control over ad placement quality.
Display & Video 360 vs Google Ads
Display & Video 360 and Google Ads solve similar advertising tasks, but they are designed for different campaign scales and levels of complexity. While Google Ads is often used for quick and straightforward campaign launches, DV360 provides significantly broader capabilities for programmatic advertising, audience management, premium inventory access, and campaign optimization.
To better understand the difference between these platforms, let’s compare their key features and capabilities side by side.
| Google Ads | Display & Video 360 | |
| Inventory | Only Google Display Network inventory |
|
| Formats | Video, Banners, Discovery |
|
| Targeting/Audience |
|
|
| Brand Safety | Whitelists/Blacklists |
|
| Frequency | Only on line item OR campaign level | Ability to adjust frequency on the several levels simultaneously |
| Viewability | Ability to set campaign goal | |
| Optimization | Only for target CPA, target CPM |
|
| Bidding | Standard | Custom BiddingBid multipliers (upweight between 0.1 and 10 times) |
| Reporting and analytics | Standard |
|
By the way, newage. has been named a 2022 Google Premier Partner
Key Features of DV360
Let’s take a closer look at the main advantages of Display & Video 360 and the capabilities it offers advertisers.
Running Advertising Campaigns Through Direct Deals
When building large-scale reach campaigns, direct publisher deals often become an important part of the media strategy. Many major websites monetize their traffic through premium advertising products, offering homepage takeovers, branded placements, or banner inventory directly to advertisers.
With DV360, advertisers can manage these direct deals within a single platform instead of relying solely on publisher reports and traffic estimates. The platform provides detailed analytics, including impressions, viewability rates, and user engagement metrics. In addition, advertisers can use this data for remarketing campaigns targeting users who previously interacted with the ads.
At the same time, DV360 provides access to a wide range of media inventory and programmatic marketplaces beyond the standard Google Display Network, allowing brands to significantly expand campaign reach and access premium placements.
Advanced Targeting Capabilities
DV360 offers significantly deeper targeting options compared to Google Ads. The platform allows advertisers to use a wide range of targeting signals, including:
- time of day;
- day of the week;
- device location;
- browser type;
- operating system and other technical signals.
Combined with other Google Marketing Platform tools, these capabilities make it possible to create highly personalized advertising campaigns. For example, we previously explained how to build weather-based dynamic creatives in Google Creative Studio. When launched through DV360, such campaigns can be optimized even further — for instance, showing ads only during sunny mornings if that aligns with the campaign strategy.
Audiences in DV360
You can manage your audiences alongside your campaigns. DV360 includes features that help advertisers create and manage audiences.
- Audience profile analysis. Learn more about your audiences using available first-party, third-party, and Google data, and create combined audiences for data sets.
- Behavior-based audience builder. Create audiences based on campaign activity in Display & Video 360.
- Audience-based frequency caps. Set frequency limits for audiences across all impressions.
At the same time, you can use not only your own customer audience data, but also third-party data, meaning you can purchase audience information collected by external providers.
Improved Performance Through Automation and Advanced Optimization Models
DV360 uses Google’s machine learning technologies to optimize campaigns more efficiently. Campaigns can be optimized for:
- landing page traffic (CPC);
- online sales (CPA);
- app installs (CPI);
- completed video or audio ad views (CIVA);
- 10-second ad views (TOS10);
- viewable impressions (AVCPM).
How Much Does Advertising Cost in Display & Video 360?
The cost of advertising in DV360, just like in Google Ads, is determined through an auction between advertisers. Pricing depends on the industry, seasonality, ad format, placements, competitor activity, and many other factors.
It is important to note that the advertising costs in Display & Video 360 and Google Ads shown below apply only to a specific time period and geo-targeting setup. The actual forecasts and campaign costs you see in your account may differ. However, we can confirm that there is a difference between advertising costs in Google Ads and DV360.
It is also important to consider that Display & Video 360 resellers charge their own platform usage fees, which are not included in the table. Google Ads also includes platform fees, although they are less transparent.
We also analyzed the overall dynamics of advertising costs in Ukraine during 2022. You can learn more in our article “How Much Does Ukrainian Digital Advertising Cost in 2022?”.
How Can Advertisers Get Access to Display & Video 360?
Advertisers can access DV360 only through Google partners, including newage. Before providing access, Google requires partners to verify that the team working with the platform has the appropriate certifications. If the client’s team does not have certified specialists, the partner agency is expected to support and assist with campaign management.
Many advertisers believe that DV360 requires a very large budget and that most resellers or partners impose minimum spending requirements. However, this is not necessarily true — there are no strict limitations, and we work with projects of different scales. If you would like to learn more about Display & Video 360 for your business, contact us at gmp@newage.agency with the subject line “Tell me about DV360”.
How to Set Up a Campaign in Display & Video 360
As you may have noticed, DV360 significantly simplifies digital campaign management and decision-making. Below is a step-by-step overview of how to create a campaign from scratch.
- Open Display & Video 360.
- Click on the “Campaign” section in the left-hand menu.
- Select “Create New Campaign”.
- Enter the campaign name, brief description, and KPI. Specify the creative format you plan to use, campaign start and end dates, and preferably the planned budget. The system will also allow you to set frequency caps, choose inventory sources, and configure targeting settings.
- Click “Create” to save the new campaign.
While the process itself looks fairly straightforward, the fourth step requires a certain level of expertise to configure the campaign properly and achieve strong results.
At newage., we specialize in display and video advertising campaigns, actively use DV360 in our daily work, and are certified Google Marketing Platform partners. Below are several examples of campaigns where Display & Video 360 helped our clients achieve their goals.
- Case Study. How Display Ads Introduced AJAX to Italians
- Three OLX case studies with the coolest display advertising analytics
- Firebase VS Adjust: How Display Campaigns Can Suffer Because of Data
- Case of CenterCredit Bank
- Case With Google Studio: how to make 40 personalized ads with resizes quickly and get results
In all of these campaigns, we combined Display & Video 360 with other Google Marketing Platform tools such as Campaign Manager, Google Creative, Google Analytics, and others. The integration between these products makes it possible to analyze and optimize campaigns even more effectively than using DV360 alone.
If you would like to discuss your project and learn how Google’s professional advertising tools can improve your campaigns, contact us at gmp@newage.agency.
Previously, we also explained how to improve display advertising performance based on analytics from different campaign elements.
FAQ: Quick Answers About Display & Video 360
What is Display & Video 360?
Display & Video 360 (DV360) is Google’s programmatic advertising platform for running display and video campaigns through a single interface. It allows advertisers to buy ad inventory across YouTube, websites, mobile apps, Connected TV, and other digital platforms.
How is DV360 different from Google Ads?
Google Ads is generally better suited for simpler and faster campaign launches, while DV360 offers significantly broader capabilities for display advertising, premium inventory access, programmatic media buying, audience management, and analytics.
Can you run YouTube ads through DV360?
Yes. DV360 allows advertisers to launch YouTube campaigns while providing additional capabilities for targeting, frequency management, audience strategy, and advertising performance measurement.
Does DV360 require a large advertising budget?
No. Despite the common misconception, DV360 is not limited to large enterprise brands. Everything depends on the partner, campaign format, and business goals. In many cases, the platform can also be effectively used for smaller-scale campaigns.
How can advertisers get access to Display & Video 360?
Advertisers can access DV360 through certified Google Marketing Platform partners. These partners help with platform onboarding, campaign setup, analytics, and advertising optimization.