Display & Video 360, usually shortened to DV360, is Google’s demand-side platform for planning, buying and optimising programmatic media.

It brings campaign management, audience data, inventory access, creatives and reporting into one operating environment. Google structures the platform around integrated modules for Campaigns, Audiences, Creatives, Inventory and Insights.

In practice, DV360 gives advertisers much more control over where media is bought, which audiences are used, how campaigns are structured, how frequently people are exposed and how performance is measured.

That flexibility is powerful.

But it also creates more decisions.

At Northpeak, we therefore start from a simple principle:

Campaign complexity is not a KPI.

DV360 is valuable when its additional control solves a real media problem.

What does a DSP actually do?

A DSP — demand-side platform — helps advertisers buy digital advertising inventory programmatically.

Instead of negotiating every individual impression manually, the platform evaluates available advertising opportunities and determines which impressions fit the campaign strategy.

In DV360, a line item can combine:

• inventory sources

• audiences

• contextual targeting

• geography

• devices

• budgets

• bidding

• frequency controls

• creatives

• quality settings

and then bid on eligible impressions according to those rules. Google defines DV360 line items as the level that bids on impressions and serves creatives to selected inventory sources.

The value of a DSP is therefore not simply automation.

It is control at scale.

How DV360 campaign structure works

One of the first things new DV360 users notice is that campaign structure is more layered than in Google Ads.

A typical structure looks like:

Advertiser
→ Campaign
→ Insertion Order
→ Line Item
→ Creative

Each level has a different role.

Advertiser

The advertiser represents the business or brand running campaigns.

Advertiser-level assets can include creatives, first-party audience and conversion-tracking resources, targeting templates and other shared campaign assets.

Think of this as the overall environment for one advertiser.

Campaign

A campaign groups insertion orders around a common business objective.

Campaign-level settings can include:

• goals

• reporting

• inventory sources

• default targeting

• frequency caps

Campaign-level frequency can apply across multiple insertion orders, which becomes valuable when a brand campaign contains several different formats or buying strategies.

Insertion Order

An insertion order — usually shortened to IO — groups related line items.

It can control:

• budget

• pacing

• dates

• KPI

• optimisation

• partner costs

• default targeting

• frequency

Line items within an IO operate under those higher-level constraints.

For example, a campaign might contain separate insertion orders for:

YouTube

programmatic video

Connected TV

while still sharing an overall campaign-level frequency strategy.

Line Item

The line item is where most of the actual media-buying logic lives.

A line item contains a bid, budget, targeting criteria and assigned creatives, and it determines which impressions the platform is eligible to buy.

Different line-item types support different media:

• Display

• Video

• Audio

• YouTube & Partners

• mobile apps

• Connected TV / OTT

• Demand Gen

• other specialised buying workflows

This structure gives the buyer considerable flexibility.

But unnecessary fragmentation creates unnecessary work.

At Northpeak, we generally prefer the simplest structure that still gives us meaningful control over budget, targeting, learning and optimisation.

What media can you buy through DV360?

This is where DV360 becomes much more than “Google Ads with more settings”.

Depending on market and inventory availability, DV360 can support a broad range of media environments.

Display

Standard display line items support image, HTML5, rich-media and native creatives.

That means display activity can range from:

• standard banners

• HTML5

• native

• interactive creatives

• publisher-specific premium formats

depending on the publisher and buying route.

Online video

DV360 supports dedicated online-video buying outside YouTube.

This can include video inventory across publishers, exchanges and private marketplace deals.

For brands building a broader video strategy, this allows YouTube to sit alongside other premium video environments rather than operating as a separate silo.

YouTube

DV360 supports dedicated YouTube & Partners line items.

Advertisers can run YouTube activity for objectives such as:

• reach

• views

• conversions

• target frequency

• video sequencing

• guaranteed or non-guaranteed deals where available

YouTube is therefore available in both Google Ads and DV360.

The reason to use DV360 is usually not simply access to YouTube.

It is the ability to make YouTube part of a broader video, CTV, frequency and measurement architecture.

Connected TV

DV360 includes dedicated Connected TV workflows.

Google’s CTV insertion orders are designed specifically for buying TV and over-the-top streaming inventory and can combine CTV inventory with YouTube & Partners activity on television devices.

This becomes useful when a brand wants to think beyond:

“YouTube on a TV screen”

and instead build a wider CTV strategy across different publishers and buying routes.

Audio

DV360 also supports programmatic audio.

Google currently lists exchanges such as:

• Spotify Ad Exchange

• AdsWizz

• Triton

• Magnite

• DAX

• Equativ

among supported audio inventory sources.

This means digital audio can potentially sit alongside display, video and CTV within the same wider programmatic operation.

Digital Out of Home

DV360 can also support programmatic digital out-of-home inventory through eligible publisher deals.

Google provides a dedicated DOOH buying workflow through Marketplace, with available inventory depending on the publisher and market.

Not every advertiser needs DOOH.

But its presence illustrates an important point:

DV360 is designed as a multi-environment programmatic buying platform, not simply a display tool.

Inventory, exchanges and deals

DV360 can buy inventory through multiple routes.

At the simplest level there is open-auction inventory.

But buyers can also use:

• private auctions

• preferred deals

• non-guaranteed fixed deals

• Programmatic Guaranteed

• Instant Deals

• publisher-specific packages

Programmatic Guaranteed is particularly useful when an advertiser wants the certainty of a direct publisher agreement while retaining programmatic execution, consolidated reporting and automated trafficking.

That flexibility matters when the strategy requires more than simply entering a website URL into a targeting field.

It allows the buyer to think about:

publisher
inventory
priority
price
format
audience
and buying method

as separate strategic choices.

Audiences and data

DV360 offers several audience layers.

Google currently supports:

• first-party audiences

• Google audiences

• third-party audiences

• combined audiences

• custom lists

That allows an advertiser to combine different types of audience intelligence rather than relying on a single data source.

Google audiences

DV360 includes familiar Google audience signals such as:

• affinity

• in-market

• demographic targeting

• custom audience logic

These can be useful for broad reach and intent-based activation.

First-party data

Advertisers can also work with their own audience data.

This can include users based on site behaviour, customer data or other first-party audience sources where policy and technical requirements allow it.

First-party data is often one of the most valuable inputs because it reflects the advertiser’s own customers and behaviour rather than a generic market segment.

Third-party data

DV360 also exposes licensed third-party audiences.

Google states that the platform offers tens of thousands of third-party audience lists from dozens of providers, with an additional CPM data fee shown in the platform.

That can include local or specialist audience providers where available.

The fact that a paid data segment exists does not mean it should automatically be used.

At Northpeak:

Data complexity is not a KPI either.

A paid audience should justify its incremental value.

One important limitation is that third-party audience lists are not supported for YouTube & Partners targeting.

Targeting and inventory control

DV360 provides much more than audience targeting.

Depending on line-item type, buyers can work with factors such as:

• apps and URLs

• audience lists

• categories

• keywords

• geography

• devices

• inventory sources

• deals

• viewability

• other contextual and quality controls

The value is not to activate every available control.

It is to choose the controls that genuinely support the objective.

Viewability

One useful DV360 quality feature is predicted viewability targeting.

Using Active View, DV360 can estimate how likely a given impression is to be viewable before the buyer enters the auction.

A line item can then target only inventory above a selected predicted-viewability threshold.

For display and video campaigns, this gives buyers an additional inventory-quality control.

But stricter is not always better.

Higher viewability thresholds reduce available inventory.

So the practical objective should be:

quality + reach + cost

rather than maximum viewability at any price.

Frequency management

Frequency is one of DV360’s strongest planning tools.

Frequency caps can be applied at:

• line-item level

• insertion-order level

• campaign level

and can work across different inventory environments, including web, apps and Connected TV.

This becomes especially useful when one campaign contains multiple formats.

For example:

**YouTube

• display

• online video

• CTV**

can be planned with higher-level exposure controls rather than optimising each component independently.

That changes the planning question from:

“How many impressions did we buy?”

to:

“How many people did we reach, and how often did we reach them?”

Measurement with Floodlight and CM360

DV360 becomes even more powerful when connected to the wider Google Marketing Platform ecosystem.

Floodlight is the shared conversion-tracking system used across Campaign Manager 360, DV360 and Search Ads 360.

Google describes it as a common data layer that can prevent measurement silos and deduplicate conversions across search and display activity.

That creates a potential architecture such as:

Search Ads 360 → Search

DV360 → Programmatic / Video / CTV / Audio

CM360 + Floodlight → Measurement

For larger advertisers, that can produce a much more coherent measurement system than running every platform independently.

CM360 can also extend measurement beyond DV360 itself, for example by tracking directly purchased publisher activity when the placements are correctly ad-served or tracked through CM360.

This can support analysis of overall reach, frequency and overlap across a broader digital campaign rather than relying only on separate publisher reports.

Creatives

DV360 can manage creatives directly or work together with Campaign Manager 360.

Depending on setup, creative formats can include:

• static display

• HTML5

• native

• video

• audio

• rich media

Line items only serve creatives that are eligible for their format and targeted exchanges. Google recommends assigning creatives ahead of launch to allow time for policy review.

For advanced campaigns, creative and media strategy should be planned together.

Premium inventory is not useful if the creative format cannot take advantage of it.

Optimisation and bidding

DV360 can use manual and automated bidding strategies depending on the campaign type and objective.

Insertion orders can also contain higher-level optimisation logic, budgets and pacing, while individual line items control more granular delivery.

The important point is that optimisation quality still depends on:

• clean campaign structure

• useful measurement

• sufficient data

• realistic goals

• meaningful segmentation

Automation does not compensate for poor architecture.

When DV360 makes sense

DV360 becomes particularly useful when several of these apply:

• YouTube is part of a broader video strategy

• premium publisher inventory matters

• you want private or guaranteed deals

• Connected TV is strategically important

• digital audio has a role

• third-party or publisher audience data is useful

• you need stronger inventory-quality controls

• frequency needs to be managed across multiple campaign components

• several markets are involved

• CM360/Floodlight measurement is part of the setup

• direct publisher activity needs to sit within a broader measurement framework

In those situations, the additional operating complexity can create real value.

When DV360 may be unnecessary

DV360 is not automatically the right answer.

It may be unnecessary when:

• Search is the primary channel

• the campaign is mostly straightforward YouTube

• budgets are small

• premium programmatic inventory is not required

• frequency control is simple

• advanced measurement is not needed

• the team does not have the capacity to operate the platform properly

A simple Google Ads campaign built well can be better than an over-engineered DV360 campaign.

Again:

Campaign complexity is not a KPI.

The goal is not to use the most advanced platform available.

The goal is to use the simplest platform that still gives the media plan the control it actually needs.

Our view

DV360 is best understood not as “another Google advertising interface”, but as a programmatic media operating environment.

Its real strength comes from combining:

inventory
deals
data
YouTube
CTV
audio
frequency
quality controls
and measurement

inside one broader architecture.

That does not mean every campaign should use every capability.

At Northpeak, the principle is:

Lean by design.

Use the complexity that creates value.

Remove the complexity that does not.

And keep the commercial structure just as clear:

Media budget belongs to the client. Our fee is our fee.

FAQ

What does DV360 stand for?

DV360 stands for Display & Video 360. It is Google’s demand-side platform for programmatic media buying and campaign management.

Is DV360 only for display and video?

No. DV360 supports multiple media types including display, online video, YouTube, Connected TV and audio, and it also has dedicated workflows for areas such as digital out-of-home.

Can DV360 run YouTube?

Yes. DV360 has dedicated YouTube & Partners line items and supports multiple YouTube buying and optimisation approaches.

Can DV360 buy Spotify?

Yes. Spotify Ad Exchange is currently listed among DV360’s supported audio exchanges.

Does DV360 support third-party audience data?

Yes. DV360 supports licensed third-party audience lists as well as first-party and Google audiences. Third-party lists can carry an additional CPM data fee.

Does DV360 work with CM360?

Yes. DV360 can operate as part of the wider Google Marketing Platform ecosystem, with CM360 and Floodlight providing ad-serving and shared measurement capabilities.

Is DV360 better than Google Ads?

Not always. DV360 offers more programmatic control, while Google Ads is simpler and remains essential for areas such as Search. The right choice depends on the media objective and required level of control.

Not sure whether DV360 is the right setup?

Northpeak helps brands and agencies decide how much platform complexity they actually need — and then builds the campaign structure around the objective.

Premium inventory when it matters.

Advanced measurement when it adds value.

No unnecessary layers.