Google DV360 is a popular programmatic advertising platform for brands with smaller ad budgets. Avoid these mistakes to make the most out of yours.
You don’t need us to tell you the benefits of advertising on CTV.
You’re already weighing its enormous reach and personalized ad targeting capabilities against its premium price tag.
So, to help guide your decision-making process, we’re zeroing in on a major player in the programmatic advertising space that buys CTV and so much more: Google’s Display & Video 360 (or DV360 for short).
What is Google DV360?
DV360 is not just a demand-side platform (DSP); it’s a digital advertising platform that enables advertisers to build, manage, and optimize campaigns via programmatic activation.
This platform is especially beneficial for those looking to execute complex, multi-faceted advertising strategies that target specific user behaviors and interests.
With access to the top streaming ad-supported publishers including Hulu, Disney, Tubi, Peacock, and YouTube, advertisers using DV360 can reach 93% of all ad-supported CTV households in the US. In addition to display, video, and CTV ads, DV360 can be used to buy homepage takeovers, audio ads, and more.
On top of that tremendous reach, frequency management across YouTube and other CTV apps means brands can see a 5% reach per dollar increase on average.
What’s the difference between Google Ads and DV360?
As Performance Marketing World explains, Google Ads allows advertisers to reach about 48% of internet users, while DV360 widens the reach to 90% of the internet!
Furthermore, DV360 allows for more granular audience segmenting. While Google Ads can only target via first-party data or Google’s audience information, DV360 combines both these types for a more comprehensive audience picture, plus third-party data for more efficient targeting.
How do I get started in Google DV360?
Define goals & select inventory
Clearly outline what you aim to achieve with your campaign, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales.
Utilize DV360’s private marketplace (PMP) to discover and secure high-quality inventory that aligns with your target audience.
DV360’s real-time bidding (RTB) capability automatically optimize ad placements based on performance metrics, ensuring maximum ROI.
Build your audience:
Using first-party data is a reliable and privacy-compliant option on the CTV screen within Display & Video 360. This helps build consumer trust, encourages purchase consideration, and reduces audience churn.
Google Audiences are a reliable audience solution built by Google with consumer privacy in mind. These audiences are available for free at a large scale, meaning marketers don’t have to sacrifice performance for durability.
The true value of DV360, however, lies in its aforementioned granular audience segmentation and targeting based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and purchase history. Brands can build custom audiences based on their own data, such as website visitors or app users, to create highly relevant campaigns.
You can also create lookalike audiences to expand your reach to new customers looking to discover products in your category.
Get creative
Google’s Ads Creative Studio allows advertisers to develop display and video ads (including CTV), customized for different audiences, locations, languages, or contexts.
Google’s Brand Extension ads let viewers interact with ads on CTV screens and send push notifications to phones for further engagement. (Advertisers can also develop custom creatives with a third party then run them across DV360 publishers.)
Studies show that advanced creatives (like Overlay Ads) earn an additional 47 seconds of watch time than standard video, are 4x more memorable, and save advertisers 72%.
Start testing
A Harvard Business Review study found that advertisers who ran 15 experiments a year saw 30% higher performance than those who ran none.
Display & Video 360 lets advertisers easily set up A/B tests. They can compare different ad campaigns, measure performance, and adjust their strategies.
Google Ads Data Hub combines display ad data with site and CRM data for geo-targeting and custom analysis.
GA4 can be linked to Google Ads for in-depth reporting on how people use a particular website or app, the full customer cycle.
Measure & adjust
From a digital perspective, we can look beyond reach at more sophisticated metrics with stronger business impact:
For example, we can understand user attention based on sound volume and time on screen. Measuring and optimizing attention metrics has been shown to increase performance by up to 79%.
Alongside digital, advertisers can track attribution for cross-device conversions. This means that if someone sees an ad on a CTV screen and makes a purchase on their phone, marketers can measure that journey across screens.
What’s new in Google DV360?
At the 2024 NewFronts, Google announced a host of exciting DV360 capabilities for brand marketers, including integrations with Disney’s Real-time Ad Exchange (DRAX), Paramount, and MAX’s premium inventory; and tools for making the buying process smoother like instant deals and the commitment optimizer.
The DV360 API now includes the ability to manage keyword targeting at the advertiser level and an optimization objective field for insertion orders.
Instead of outcome-based buying, you can now use tools like automated bidding strategies and optimized targeting to maximize the likelihood that an impression will lead to a desired outcome.
What mistakes should brand marketers avoid when working with DV360?
Not clearly setting goals. If you don’t get specific about your campaign goals and choose the right metrics to measure your progress, you’ll waste money on ineffective tactics.
Letting the algorithm be the boss. While Google’s automated bidding and predictive targeting technologies are industry-standard, we as human advertisers must still take responsibility for monitoring our campaigns and proactively course-correcting as needed.
Not curating your audiences. Precise audience targeting is shown time and time again to be the most efficient way to spend your ad budget. It doesn’t matter that a million people see your ad if half of them will never need your product! Take advantage of Google’s audience segmentation features.
Wrong geo-targeting. If you’re using a zip code for geo-targeting, keep in mind that the same zip code may exist in another country! Double-check that you’re targeting the right area.
Whether you’re programmatically buying media on DV360 or another platform, the basic principles of setting up and measuring campaigns are the same. Partnering with a trusted media agency can help you navigate programmatic advertising safely and effectively.
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