How to Buy and Measure CTV Ads in DV360

What does buying CTV through DV360 actually involve?

Buying connected TV in DV360 comes down to three jobs: getting the right television inventory, building line items that stay on the big screen and actually spend, and reading results for a screen the whole family watches. This guide takes them in that order.

It assumes the plan already exists. If you are still choosing apps, dates and a budget split, start with our step-by-step OTT campaign planning guide, which handles that part across every screen. Platforms, indicative rates and minimum spends are on our page about CTV advertising in India. Here we stay inside DV360 and on the television.

Which deal types can you use for CTV in DV360?

Television inventory reaches a DV360 buyer through four doors, and most Indian plans combine two or three.

Most large Indian streaming apps sell TV inventory to DV360 buyers through PG and private deals, and many will restrict a deal to TV screens if you ask at the proposal stage, the step covered in buying premium publisher inventory. Amazon's apps are the exception: Prime Video is sold through Amazon Ads and Amazon DSP, and MX Player mostly is too, so those buys sit next to DV360 rather than inside it.

A TV-only deal usually prices near the top of the app's range, and the current indicative numbers are on our connected TV and OTT page.

How do you build the insertion orders and line items for a TV buy?

The build depends on the deal type.

A PG deal mostly builds itself. Once you accept the proposal and configure the deal against an advertiser and a campaign, DV360 creates the PG insertion order. Your part is to assign a creative for every duration the deal accepts, confirm the flight and budget match the booking, and switch it on with a day or two to spare.

Everything else you build by hand, in DV360's Connected TV insertion order type. It holds two kinds of line item: Connected TV line items for premium TV supply, which bid on CPM, and YouTube and partners line items for connected TV, which use target CPM. Settings that suit a television, such as apps, position and device, come preselected, and options that mean nothing on a TV, such as keywords, browser and carrier, are not offered.

Take a Chennai appliance brand running a TV-only PG deal on a Tamil app, a private auction across two more apps and YouTube on CTV in Tamil Nadu. A clean build has:

1. One campaign for the flight, with the frequency cap set at campaign level so every route counts against one limit.
2. The PG deal configured into that campaign.
3. A Connected TV insertion order holding the private auction and YouTube CTV lines.
4. One line item per deal or route, so a pacing problem shows up on day one.
5. Creatives approved and everything active the day before launch.

On PG line items, though, DV360 treats the campaign cap as best effort, because the publisher's booking comes first. A family that binges one serial can see the ad more often than your cap says.

How do you keep a line item on the TV screen?

You control the screen in three places, and each one behaves differently.

In a PG or private deal, the screen is written into the deal terms, so a TV-only deal delivers on TV only. Do not add your own device or audience filters to a PG line item on top of that. The publisher reserved volume against the deal as written, and each extra filter shrinks what can serve, which shows up as under-delivery on a booking you have already paid for.

On a Connected TV line item, the TV device setting is already in place. Leave it alone.

On an ordinary YouTube and partners line item inside a wider video plan, set the bid adjustments for phones, tablets and computers to -100%. The rest of a YouTube build, from ad groups to bids, is in running YouTube ads through DV360.

Then check. After the first full day, pull a report split by device type. If a line meant for the living room shows phone delivery, fix it before more budget goes.

What creative specs work on a television?

A file that looks fine on a phone can look soft on a 55-inch screen, or fail to serve at all. Check these before trafficking:

• Supply a 16:9 file at 1920x1080 or better, exported from the best master you have, not a file compressed for social media.
• Use a plain video file or a standard VAST tag. Many TV apps stitch ads into the stream on their servers, and interactive VPAID units or wrappers that depend on JavaScript usually cannot play there. On PG deals, a VPAID creative is a known cause of under-delivery.
• Match the durations the deal accepts. If the publisher agreed 10 and 20-second spots, a 15-second file has nowhere to run.
• Keep supers and logos away from the edges of the frame, where some sets crop, and make text large enough to read from the sofa.
• Mix audio for TV speakers and keep the loudness close to your TV commercial, so the break does not jump in volume after the show.
• Drop "tap", "swipe" and "click" lines. If you want a response, hold a QR code or a short web address on screen long enough to scan.

On YouTube, a 30-second non-skippable cut serves mainly on connected TV. Our YouTube CTV guide lists the formats, including pause ads.

How do you measure household reach and co-viewing?

First, know what each number counts. CTV reports mix three units, and most reporting errors come from comparing two of them.

DV360 estimates reach with Google's models rather than counting raw devices, and it offers co-viewed versions of its reach metrics for connected TV. Its reach planning can show co-viewing for YouTube on TV before launch too. Expect the co-viewed figure to sit above the screen count, since a Sunday film on the living room TV is rarely watched alone.

Two rules keep the numbers honest. Never multiply household reach by family size yourself, because that is a guess dressed up as data. And when you set CTV against mobile video, compare people with people or screens with screens. Most DV360 reach metrics also need a date range of 92 days or less, so report a long always-on flight in windows of that length, and never add the windows' unique reach together.

How many homes CTV added on top of linear TV or mobile YouTube is a separate question, answered with incremental reach rather than these totals.

What does completion rate tell you on a TV screen?

Completion rate is the share of started ads that played to the end. On a television it is usually high, because many breaks cannot be skipped and nobody is scrolling past. So a high CTV completion rate is less impressive than it looks, and a low one is more worrying.

Read it three ways. By quartile: if most of the loss on a skippable YouTube line comes before the midpoint, the opening of the ad is the problem, not the inventory. By line item: one deal sitting far below the others usually points to a creative or app issue worth raising with the publisher. And by cost per completed view, which is spend divided by completed views and the fairest way to compare routes priced differently.

A quick illustration. An open auction CTV line at ₹300 CPM with 95% of ads completed costs ₹300 ÷ 950, about ₹0.32 per completed view. A TV-only PG line at ₹450 CPM with 90% completed costs ₹450 ÷ 900, or ₹0.50. On a television, completion barely separates the routes, so the PG premium pays for named shows, the guaranteed screen and reserved volume, not for finished views.

Can you run a brand lift study on CTV buys?

Sometimes, and the deal type decides it. Brand Lift in DV360 covers YouTube and partners line items, and cross-exchange connected TV line items bought through real-time bidding or instant reserve. Non-YouTube PG inventory is not measured, which matters because most premium OTT on the television is bought on PG.

Budget is the second gate, and the thresholds differ by market and change over time: measuring brand lift lists the current ones, and the eligibility check when you create the study has the final say.

For a PG-heavy plan, ask the publisher whether it runs its own lift research, or brief an independent research firm. A rise in branded searches in the targeted states is a cheaper signal worth tracking either way.

What setup mistakes stop CTV line items from delivering?

Most CTV problems we are asked to fix come from a short list:

• Extra targeting stacked on a PG line item, starving a booking that is already paid for.
• VPAID units or third-party wrappers that television apps cannot play.
• Relying on a language setting for regional viewers. Google's CTV targeting notes say English language targeting works on most CTV inventory, while other languages are unsupported or limited, so buy regional apps or language-specific deals for Tamil, Bengali or Marathi homes.
• Open auction CTV bids set at mobile video levels, so the line wins almost nothing.
• Judging the flight on click-through rate, which on a television means very little.
• Reporting screens or households to a client as if they were people.

Next step

With your own DV360 seat, such as a self-serve account, co-managed, advertiser, child seat or partner account, your team can follow this build directly. If you would rather we run it, our DV360 Managed Service or a Campaign-Based Engagement covers deals, setup and optimisation. Those clients have no DV360 login and follow delivery, reach, completion and the device split in the DV360 Reports Section, our live dashboards built on DV360 data. To size the buy first, ask for a free media plan.