What is Google Display & Video 360?

With over 83% of US digital display dollars being transacted using programmatic technology according to eMarketer, demand side platform (DSP) usage shows no signs of slowing down. Google introduced its DSP—Display & Video 360 (DV360)—in 2018 as an evolution of DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and as a part of the rebranding under the Google Marketing Platform umbrella. In this post, you’ll find an overview of DV360 as well as some features that make it stand out among the crowded DSP landscape.

An overview of Display & Video 360

DV360 is Google’s own demand side platform. A DSP is a technology platform used to buy and run programmatic advertising. Advertisers use a DSP to set preferences such as which audience characteristics to target, how much to spend for each ad that displays and what time of day to display their ads and others. The settings in DV360 are then used to connect with a wide range of publishers who can reach the specified audience, at the right cost. Ads are displayed across a variety of publishers who offer ad space on Google Ad Exchange (AdX) and other ad exchanges and networks to which DV360 has direct connections.

Why DV360 is important

The biggest benefit of introducing DV360 as a tool in your marketing stack is efficiency. DV360 offers access to a myriad of publishers all in one place. This provides a single platform for accessing, managing and reporting on all your inventory, eliminating the need to work directly with publishers on a one-to-one basis.

Key features of DV360

DV360 offers a number of features to help advertisers reach the right audiences and improve campaign management. This includes:

Scalability

DV360 provides access to AdX: Google’s Ad Exchange. That way you don’t need to go looking for sites that you think will provide the right audience for your product or service. DV360 will find them for you among one of the largest groups of publishers available.

Audience targeting

DV360 offers five different options for building your target audiences, resulting in a robust and large group that will see your ad. You can choose from thousands of existing target groups, such as cooking enthusiasts or gamers. You can also partner with a data provider through DV360 to build your own audience that aligns with the goals of your marketing strategy—such as women, ages 18–34, who are interested in cosmetics and live in a specific country. Any of these audience lists can also be used to suppress, which is often overlooked. One common use case for suppression is to ensure your ad dollars for acquisition are not used on impressions served to current customers.

End-to-end campaign management

DV360 combines five modules so that all of your specialist teams work together, in the same platform, to access the same information. The five modules include Campaigns, Audiences, Creative, Inventory and Insights. For example, when creating an analysis on audience performance, your analyst will have access to all the different audiences that were targeted, allowing them to add context to the report.

Learn more about DV360

Above are just a few of the time-saving efficiencies that can be gained from using DV360. For more information or to chat with Cardinal Path about DV360, visit our DV360 page.