DV360: Google’s DSP & Programmatic Ads Guide 2025

Google Display & Video 360 (DV360) is a powerful programmatic platform that offers advertisers extensive reach and precise targeting capabilities. 

According to Bounteous, DV360 reaches over 80 ad exchange networks and displays ads on over 90% of the Internet. An extensive network of partner companies that exchange data with Google, such as BlueKai, LiveRamp, and Eyeota, allows advertisers to personalize ads and effectively target the right audiences based on behavior and demographics.

This guide explores how DV360 can outperform other programmatic platforms, focusing on its advanced targeting options, seamless integration within the Google ecosystem, and comprehensive reporting tools. 

What is Google Display and Video 360?

Key Features and Capabilities of DV360:

• Audience Targeting and Data Integration: DV360 offers some of the most advanced targeting options in programmatic advertising. Its integration with Google’s extensive data network and third-party providers enables advertisers to create detailed audience segments based on user behavior, demographics, and interests. It supports first-party, second-party, and third-party data, ensuring precise targeting and personalization.
• Real-Time Bidding and Ad Serving: DV360 supports real-time bidding (RTB), allowing advertisers to automatically bid on ad inventory based on pre-set criteria and goals. The platform also offers AI-driven optimization features, such as automated bidding strategies, dynamic ad adjustments, and machine learning-powered performance recommendations, all designed to enhance campaign efficiency and ROI.
• Cross-Channel Campaign Management: DV360 allows advertisers to manage campaigns across multiple channels and formats, including display, video, mobile, CTV, and native ads, all within a single interface.
• Custom Reporting and Analytics: DV360 provides in-depth reporting and analytics tools that allow marketers to track campaign performance in real time. Users can create custom reports, visualize metrics like ROAS, conversion rates, and audience engagement. The integration with Google Analytics and other Google tools further enhances DV360’s analytics capabilities, enabling data-driven campaign optimization.
• Creative Management: The platform offers a suite of creative tools, including integration with Google Web Designer and access to a Creative Gallery for dynamic and engaging ad creation. Advertisers can also use Ad Canvas for designing complex creatives tailored to specific campaign goals.

Tool suggestion

Protect revenue and avoid costly compliance issues in your DV360 campaigns.

Improvado’s Marketing Data Governance solution automates campaign monitoring, from targeting accuracy and brand safety to data integrity and KPI pacing.

Marketing Data Governance assists at all stages of campaign lifecycle:

• Pre-launch: Validate campaign setup, including targeting parameters, creative elements, budgets, and brand safety.
• In-flight: Monitor whether campaigns meet your performance expectations and benchmarks (e.g., CTR, CPC, impressions, etc.)
• Post-campaign: Validate the reliability of campaign data, including UTM naming conventions and data extraction statuses, and identify any irregularities that could skew analytics results.

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Google Ads vs. DV360

Marketers who use Google Ads may wonder what the big deal is about Display and Video 360. There are multiple answers to the Google Ads vs. DV360 question.

The Trade Desk vs. DV360

The Trade Desk is another leading programmatic advertising platform, known for its flexibility and wide-ranging inventory across global ad exchanges. 

The choice between The Trade Desk and DV360 depends on factors like ad inventory needs, viewability tracking, creative management, and platform integrations. 

The table below highlights the key differences between these top programmatic platforms to help you decide which one suits your advertising strategy.

What's Next? Set up and Optimize DV360 Campaigns

Let’s quickly go through the essential steps of DV360 campaign set up and optimization, and for more detailed information, check out our guide. 

1. Define Campaign Objectives and KPIs: Establish clear goals (e.g., brand awareness, conversions) and key metrics to track performance, ensuring your strategy aligns with business objectives.
2. Leverage Advanced Targeting Options: Use first-party data, audience lists, contextual targeting, and lookalike audiences to refine reach and maximize relevance.
3. Organize Campaigns Using Hierarchy: Structure campaigns within DV360 using Campaigns, Insertion Orders (IOs), and Line Items to control budgets, flight dates, and targeting effectively.
4. Implement Automated Bidding Strategies: Apply automated bidding to optimize spend and increase efficiency, ensuring your budget is directed toward high-impact placements.
5. Monitor Performance in Real-Time: Use DV360’s real-time reporting tools to track key metrics like viewability, CTR, and conversions, identifying trends and issues as they arise.‍
6. Continuously Optimize Campaigns: Adjust bids, reallocate budgets, and A/B test creatives to enhance performance.

Utilize automated rules and alerts to maintain proactive campaign management. Marketing Data Management offers a powerful solution for campaign performance, brand and data compliance that helps optimize ROAS by minimizing media waste and optimizing campaign setups.

Here’s an example of DV360 parameters Marketing Data Governance can validate:

• Keywords added for the insertion order,
• Geographical targets set for the insertion order,
• Keyword exclusions are used (Display & Video),
• Third-party brand safety partner solution is integrated,
• Sensitive content placements were removed,
• Advertiser Account is at or less $X Avg. CPC,
• Advertiser Account is at or above X% Clicks,
• Insertion Order is at or above X% Interaction Rate,
• Line Item is at or less $X CPM,
• Line Item Target CPA is at or below $X.

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.

Keeping Track of DV360 Campaign Performance

DV360 surely has in-app analytics features that allow tracking campaign performance right in the platform's UI. While in-app analytics do provide essential insights for monitoring user engagement and understanding user behavior, this data presents a limited scope for real-time optimization and leads to inadequate attribution modeling.

DV360's in-app analytics primarily focuses on the data generated within DV360 itself, ignoring the rest of the user interactions throughout the customer journey. This results in an inadequate attribution, where the contribution of each interaction towards the final conversion is unclear.

An alternative, in this case, is to bring together data from various sources for comprehensive analysis manually or utilize an advanced marketing solution like Improvado. The platform pulls data from 500+ marketing and sales data sources, prepares it for analysis, loads it to a BI or visualization tool, and assists with insights discovery.

Improvado comes with numerous dashboard templates you can use to visualize your data. Here's an example of a cross-channel dashboard you can use to track changes in the performance of your paid and organic campaigns.

Here some other noticeable features of Improvado:

• Marketing attribution modeling: Improvado can help you connect marketing, sales, and finance data to identify touchpoints that drive revenue. You can switch between different attribution models in a few clicks or request a custom model that will meet the unique needs of your company.
• Professional Services: Improvado's team of analytics experts can customize your dashboard or create any custom metrics and connectors on demand.
• Managed data warehouse: If you need a dedicated place to store your marketing data, Improvado got you covered. The team can create and manage a data BigQuery-based data warehouse to keep all of your historical data safe and sound.

Frequently Asked Questions