DV360 Resellers in India: How to Choose the Right Partner
A DV360 reseller is a company that holds a Display & Video 360 partner seat and gives brands and agencies access under it, with billing, support and often campaign management. To choose one in India, compare seat structure, data ownership, fee transparency, minimums, deal access, support and exit terms, not just the headline fee.
Because DV360 has no public sign-up, most Indian brands and agencies reach it through a third party. The market calls these firms resellers, partners or DV360 providers. They differ a lot in what they actually give you, and the cheapest quote is rarely the best fit.
Below we explain what a reseller does, the types you will meet, and the questions that separate a good provider from a risky one.
What does a DV360 reseller do?
Most resellers hold a DV360 partner seat, the top level of the platform that carries billing, contracts and users. Some work under another firm's seat instead, so ask which applies before you sign. The reseller creates advertisers or child seats for clients under the partner, then provides some mix of:
- Platform access and user roles for your team
- Billing, usually in rupees with GST invoices
- Deals with OTT apps, news publishers and DOOH networks
- Tracking setup, training and support
- Campaign planning, buying, optimisation and reporting
The model exists because a direct partner seat with Google usually means a contract with spend commitments. A reseller spreads that across many clients, so you can start sooner and smaller. Our guide on how to get DV360 access in India compares this route with the others.
What types of DV360 resellers will you find in India?
| Type | What you get | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Access provider | A self-serve advertiser or child seat, with billing and support | Teams with trained DV360 traders |
| Co-managed partner | A shared account where the provider handles setup, deals and optimisation | Teams building skills |
| Managed service partner | Planning, buying, optimisation and reporting done for you | Brands and agencies without a trading desk |
| Media agency with a trading desk | DV360 as one part of a wider media buy | Brands that outsource all media |
Many firms, including us, offer more than one of these. The useful question is which model you are actually buying and what it includes. If full management is what you need, our guide on judging a managed DV360 service lists what that should cover. If you are choosing a full media agency rather than a DV360 provider, our guide to choosing a programmatic advertising agency has its own checklist.
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What should you check before choosing a DV360 reseller?
Use this table as a scorecard when you meet providers.
| What to check | A good answer | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Seat structure | They explain whose partner seat you sit under | Vague answers about the seat |
| Data ownership | Audiences, tags, reports and history are yours, in writing | "We can sort that out later" |
| Pricing | Media cost and fees shown as separate lines | One all-in rate with no breakdown |
| Minimums | A clear monthly or campaign minimum, agreed upfront | Minimums that appear after signing |
| Billing | Rupee invoices with GST and written payment terms | Unclear currency or tax treatment |
| Access | Named user roles, or a reporting login you can use | No visibility of your own campaigns |
| Deals | Specific OTT, news and DOOH deals with indicative rates | "Any publisher you like" with no rates |
| Brand safety | Exclusions by default, verification where budget allows | No mention of brand safety |
| Support | A named contact and agreed response times | A shared inbox and nothing more |
| Exit | A written handover process for data and tags | Lock-ins with no exit route |
No provider will score perfectly on every line, and that is fine. The lines that matter most are data ownership, pricing clarity and exit, because they are the hardest to fix once campaigns are live.
What questions should you ask a DV360 reseller?
Ask these in the first meeting, then check the answers appear in the written proposal:
- Do you hold the partner seat yourselves, or are we under another provider's seat?
- Which setup are you proposing: self-serve, child seat, co-managed or managed?
- What is your fee model, and which work does it cover?
- How are Google's platform fee and any data, verification or ad serving fees handled, and who bills them?
- What is the minimum spend, and is payment prepaid or on credit?
- Which premium deals can you set up today, and at what indicative rates?
- Can we see a sample report, and where does its data come from?
- Which brand safety settings do you apply by default?
- Who owns the advertiser, audiences and history, and how does a handover work?
- Who is our day-to-day contact, and what are your response times?
Our DV360 pricing guide helps you judge the answers to questions 3 and 4, and our guide to the minimum budget for DV360 helps with question 5.
How should you compare reseller quotes?
Put every quote on the same footing. Give each provider the same media plan, with the same channels, dates and budget, and ask for media cost and every fee as separate lines. Then compare three things.
- Effective cost. Total cost, including all fees, divided by impressions and multiplied by 1,000. This is the number that tells you what you really pay per thousand impressions.
- Work included. Who builds the campaigns, who optimises them, how often, and what the reports look like.
- Inventory. Which deals each provider can actually set up for your dates.
Here is an illustrative case. Two providers quote on the same ₹10 lakh media plan. Provider A charges 10% for access and support only, so your team does the trading. Provider B charges 15% for full management, deals and weekly reporting. On paper, A is ₹50,000 cheaper. But if nobody in your team has run DV360 before, a loose frequency cap or broad targeting on ₹10 lakh can waste far more than ₹50,000. The right choice depends on your team, not just the fee.
What should agencies look for in a DV360 reseller?
Agencies sit between the reseller and the client, so they have extra needs.
- Client ownership. In a child seat, the agency runs its own client advertisers under the provider's partner seat. In a white-label setup, the agency owns the client relationship and the provider does the execution behind it. Either way, the agreement should say the client relationship belongs to the agency. Our DV360 child seat account suits agencies that want to run several clients themselves.
- Real delivery in every report. However a report is branded, the numbers in it should be the real delivery and spend from DV360. Our guide to white-label programmatic advertising covers how to set this up properly.
- Per-client visibility. You need spend and delivery by client, and ideally a login you can give each client. Our DV360 Reports Section does this for campaigns we run on our managed and campaign-based models.
When should you move off a reseller's seat?
Most teams never need to. A move to your own partner seat starts to make sense when programmatic spend is large and steady, you have an in-house trading team, and you want full control over users, billing and settings at the top level. Google decides who gets a partner seat, and it usually means spend commitments, so plan a readiness check and a careful migration of audiences and tags. Our post on child seat and partner accounts explains how the two compare.
Next step
If you are comparing providers, start by matching the setup to your team. Our DV360 services overview sets out self-serve, co-managed, managed, child seat and campaign-based options side by side, and our team can talk through which fits your brand or your clients.
