GDN vs. DV360: How to Choose the Best Display Ad Platform

Google offers two robust solutions for display advertising—Google Display Network (GDN) and Display & Video 360 (DV360). While both platforms are part of the Google ecosystem, they serve distinct roles depending on the scale, complexity, and objectives of campaigns.

This guide explores the core differences between GDN and DV360, offering insights into how each platform can best serve different advertising needs.

GDN and DV360: Overview

GDN is well-suited for campaigns focused on brand awareness, audience reach, and retargeting: 

• Its vast reach makes it ideal for businesses looking to increase visibility and exposure across a wide range of websites and apps.
• GDN is particularly effective for retargeting campaigns, allowing advertisers to re-engage users who have visited their site or interacted with their brand, driving them back to complete a purchase or other desired actions.
• Additionally, GDN supports custom intent and affinity audiences, helping advertisers reach users who are actively searching for products or services similar to what they offer. 

GDN also integrates seamlessly with Google Ads, offering detailed reporting, campaign management, and bidding options, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). 

DV360 offers more comprehensive control over ad placement, creative optimization, and audience targeting, making it ideal for advertisers managing large budgets and looking for granular optimization options across a wide range of inventory, including premium video content​.

As part of the Google Marketing Platform, DV360 integrates seamlessly with other Google tools, such as Google Analytics 360 and Campaign Manager 360, providing unified campaign management and reporting.

Google Display Network vs. DV360: Comparative Table

In the following sections, let's take a closer look at the differences between GDN and DV360.

1. Reach and Scale

Google Display Network offers substantial reach within the Google ecosystem, providing access to over 2 million websites, mobile apps, and key Google properties such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google Discover. 

However, this reach is confined to Google-owned and partner sites, limiting its scope to inventory controlled by Google and its direct partners. This makes GDN a powerful option for advertisers seeking broad reach, but only within the Google ecosystem.

DV360, on the other hand, extends far beyond Google’s network, offering access to multiple ad exchanges and premium publishers across a variety of platforms, including display, video, connected TV, and audio. DV360 allows advertisers to scale their campaigns globally, leveraging inventory from Google and external exchanges like OpenX, AppNexus, and more.

DV360 also supports private marketplace (PMP) deals and Programmatic Guaranteed deals, providing access to high-quality, brand-safe inventory that is not available on GDN, further enhancing its global reach and scale.

2. Creatives

GDN offers basic creative capabilities, supporting standard image ads, responsive display ads, text ads, and video ads across Google’s network of websites, apps, and properties. 

Responsive Display Ads are a key feature, as they automatically adjust size, format, and appearance to fit various placements, simplifying creative management for advertisers. GDN allows advertisers to upload image assets, logos, and text, and the platform dynamically combines these to create ad variations, reducing the complexity of manual creative creation. 

While these capabilities are efficient for simpler campaigns, GDN is somewhat limited in its support for more complex or interactive ad formats.

DV360 provides a more sophisticated set of tools for creative asset management and supports a wide range of formats, including rich media, interactive display ads, native ads, video, audio, and connected TV (CTV) ads. 

One standout feature is Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO), which enables real-time personalization of ad creatives based on user data like location, device, or behavior. 

In addition, DV360 offers Ad Canvas, an integrated design tool that allows advertisers to build custom interactive and rich media ads without needing extensive coding skills. 

Another helpful feature is the Format Gallery, which provides a library of pre-built templates for rich media and interactive ads, speeding up the creative process and offering inspiration for ad design. 

DV360 also integrates with Google Studio, enabling collaboration on advanced creative projects, testing various creative formats, and managing multiple creative versions tailored to different audiences and channels.

3. Audiences

Google Display Network offers robust but somewhat basic audience targeting options compared to DV360, leveraging Google’s vast first-party data from its search, YouTube, and other properties. 

GDN allows advertisers to target users through:

• Demographic Targeting: Target based on age, gender, parental status, and household income.
• Interest Targeting (Affinity and In-Market Audiences): Affinity audiences help target users based on their long-term interests, while in-market audiences focus on those actively researching or looking to buy specific products or services.
• Keyword and Contextual Targeting: Ads are shown based on the relevance of keywords to the content of a web page or app. This ensures that ads are displayed in contextually relevant environments.
• Remarketing: Retarget users who have previously interacted with your site, app, or ads.
• Custom Audiences: Advertisers can create custom segments by combining keywords, URLs, and apps to reach more refined audiences.

GDN’s audience targeting capabilities are particularly effective for advertisers looking to focus their efforts within Google’s ecosystem, such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google Display Network sites. 

However, its targeting is limited to Google-owned data and lacks access to more advanced third-party data integrations that DV360 provides.

DV360 offers significantly more advanced and flexible audience targeting options. 

It integrates with Google’s first-party data, second-party and third-party data providers, allowing advertisers to access a much broader range of audience data. 

DV360’s targeting options include, but not limited to:

• Affinity and In-Market Audiences: Similar to GDN, but with deeper segmentation and customization options using more granular data.
• Custom Affinity Audiences: This allows advertisers to build highly personalized audience segments based on URLs, apps, and keywords. Advertisers can refine their targeting to align more closely with specific behaviors and interests.
• Custom Intent Audiences: Enables advertisers to target users based on their search behavior or other intent-driven actions, such as specific purchases or recent interests.
• Lookalike Modeling: DV360 allows advertisers to create lookalike audiences, expanding their reach by targeting new users who behave similarly to existing high-value customers.
• Third-Party Data Integration: One of DV360’s biggest advantages is its integration with a wide range of third-party data providers, allowing for highly specialized audience segments based on purchase behavior, financial demographics, media consumption, and more.
• Programmatic Remarketing: Beyond basic remarketing, DV360 allows for advanced dynamic remarketing, enabling personalized ads based on the specific actions a user has taken on a website or app.
• Geo and Device Targeting: DV360 provides advanced geographical and device targeting, allowing advertisers to tailor their campaigns to specific regions, devices, or even connection types.

Furthermore, DV360 allows advertisers to build Custom Audience Lists from multiple data sources and integrate offline data (such as CRM data) to create even more tailored segments. This provides far more flexibility and control over audience segmentation, making DV360 ideal for advertisers with complex, data-driven campaign strategies.

4. Reporting and Analytics

GDN offers basic reporting and analytics through the Google Ads interface, providing advertisers with standard performance metrics such as clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions. CPC, and conversion value.

Google Display Network also provides basic insights into audience demographics and geography, allowing advertisers to understand where their traffic is coming from. 

However, its analytics are mostly limited to the performance of campaigns within Google’s network. The reporting capabilities are easy to use and sufficient for small to medium-sized businesses but lack the depth and cross-channel insights that larger, data-driven enterprises may require.

DV360 offers advanced reporting and analytics features.

DV360 integrates with the entire Google Marketing Platform, including Google Analytics 360 and Campaign Manager 360 (CM360), allowing advertisers to access more comprehensive, cross-channel performance data. Key reporting features of DV360 include:

• Cross-Channel Attribution: DV360 allows for detailed multi-channel attribution reporting, tracking user interactions across display, video, mobile, connected TV, and audio. 
• Granular Insights: Advertisers can view in-depth performance data by audience segment, creative, device, geography, and even individual publishers.
• Custom Reports and Dashboards: DV360 enables the creation of custom reports with user-defined metrics, allowing advertisers to track performance based on their unique goals and KPIs.
• Data-Driven Attribution Models: DV360 supports advanced attribution models, such as data-driven attribution (DDA), which uses machine learning to analyze historical data and assign conversion credit based on the impact of each touchpoint in the user journey.
• Real-Time Reporting: DV360 offers real-time analytics, allowing advertisers to track the performance of their campaigns as they happen and make adjustments immediately.
• Inventory & Viewability Metrics: DV360 provides advanced metrics on viewability and inventory quality, helping advertisers understand where their ads are shown and whether they’re likely to be seen by the target audience.
• Third-Party Integration: DV360 also allows integration with third-party measurement and verification tools, such as DoubleVerify and MOAT, for tracking ad viewability, brand safety, and ad fraud prevention.
• Creative Performance Insights: DV360 offers insights into which creative versions are performing best, allowing advertisers to test and optimize creatives dynamically for improved outcomes.

5. Cost and Performance

The cost models of GDN and DV360 reflect their differing focuses. 

GDN typically uses a Cost Per Click (CPC) model, making it a more budget-friendly option for advertisers focused on maximizing reach and engagement at a lower cost​. This platform also supports Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM) pricing models.

In contrast, DV360 is geared toward larger advertisers, agencies, and enterprises, and its cost structure reflects its more advanced features. DV360 offers the following pricing models:

• Dynamic CPM (dCPM): DV360 automatically adjusts bids based on real-time data to maximize performance while staying within budget.
• Programmatic Guaranteed: Fixed pricing for premium inventory, ensuring guaranteed delivery on select platforms or with specific publishers.
• Target CPA (tCPA): Similar to GDN, but with more advanced optimization for cross-channel performance.

DV360 generally has higher costs than GDN due to its access to premium inventory, advanced targeting capabilities, and integration with private marketplaces (PMPs). DV360 provides access to exclusive inventory through Programmatic Guaranteed and PMP deals, allowing advertisers to place ads in more premium environments, often resulting in better performance but at a higher cost.

6. Brand Safety

Brand safety is a critical consideration for advertisers, and both GDN and DV360 provide tools to address it. 

Brand Safety in Google Display Network is maintained primarily through Google’s built-in controls, such as content exclusions, sensitive category blocking, and placement reports that allow advertisers to exclude specific websites or apps from their campaigns. 

Advertisers can also use ad verification tools provided by Google to ensure that their ads are displayed in brand-safe environments. 

However, GDN’s brand safety controls are more standardized and somewhat limited compared to DV360.

Brand Safety in Display & Video 360 is significantly more advanced, offering advertisers enhanced control over where their ads appear. 

DV360 integrates with leading third-party verification partners such as DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS), providing robust monitoring and protection against ad fraud, non-human traffic, and low-quality placements. 

DV360 also supports Programmatic Guaranteed deals and Private Marketplaces (PMPs), which allow advertisers to access premium inventory in highly controlled and brand-safe environments. 

These features provide advertisers with greater confidence that their ads will be shown in appropriate contexts and protect brand reputation in sensitive markets.

Conclusion: Choosing between GDN and DV360

The choice between GDN and DV360 depends largely on the campaign’s scale, complexity, and goals. 

• GDN is an excellent choice for advertisers seeking a straightforward solution to reach a broad audience at a lower cost.
• For advertisers managing larger budgets or needing more advanced targeting, premium inventory access, and detailed reporting, DV360 offers the necessary tools and flexibility to optimize performance across multiple channels. 

By understanding the strengths and limitations of each platform, marketing teams can make informed decisions that align with their strategic objectives and deliver more effective campaigns.

Regardless of the platform you choose, success of campaigns depends on flawless execution and continuous optimization.

For better control over campaign execution and greater optimization capabilities, integrate Marketing Data Governance.

It is a powerful solution for campaign, brand and data compliance, governing campaigns on Display & Video 360, Google Display Network, Google Ads, and many other advertising platforms.

Marketing Data Governance assists at all stages of the campaign lifecycle:

• Pre-launch: Marketing Data Governance validates campaign setup, including targeting parameters, creative elements, budgets, and brand safety.
• In-flight: Marketing Data Governance monitors whether campaigns meet your performance expectations and benchmarks. For example, the platform monitors and notifies you when the average cost per click exceeds the benchmark, CTR drops, or line items exceed a certain number of clicks.
• Post-campaign: Marketing Data Governance validates the reliability of campaign data, including UTM naming conventions and data extraction statuses, and identifies any irregularities that could skew analytics results. 

The platform alerts on any anomalies and rule breaks and displays the overall state of campaign governance on a clear dashboard for further review and analysis.

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