How Does DV360 Work? Structure, Buying and Reporting Explained

How does DV360 work, in short?

DV360 is a buying machine that follows your rules. You set the goal, budget, audience and inventory, and DV360 decides which ad opportunities to buy and at what price. If you are new to the platform, start with our explainer on what DV360 is. This guide covers the mechanics.

Three parts make it work: an account structure that holds your settings, a decision process that runs for every single impression, and a reporting layer that tells you what happened.

What are the levels of a DV360 account?

A DV360 account has five levels: partner, advertiser, campaign, insertion order and line item. Each level passes settings down to the one below it.

The partner level is where the commercial setup lives. If you buy through someone else's seat, that partner holds the contract with Google and the billing, and you work at advertiser level or in a child seat of your own. Our post on child seats and partner accounts explains the difference.

The advertiser level holds what you reuse across campaigns: audience lists, conversion tags and creatives. Brand safety rules belong here too and apply to every line item under the advertiser. From November 2026 you manage them in the advertiser's settings under targeting rules, as Google retires the separate advertiser-level Brand Control Center page.

Targeting belongs on the line item. Since February 2026, targeting and inventory source settings can only be set at partner level and on line items, not on campaigns or insertion orders. Older guides that set default targeting on the IO are out of date.

What types of line items are there?

The line item type decides what you can buy and which creatives fit. The main types are:

• Display, for banners and native ads on websites and apps
• Video, for in-stream and out-stream video outside YouTube
• Audio, for music, radio and podcast apps
• YouTube & partners, for YouTube and Google video partner inventory, with ads grouped into ad groups
• Demand Gen, which runs video and image ads across YouTube, Discover, Gmail and the Google Display Network
• Over-the-top, for streaming TV inventory, created inside a TV insertion order
• Mobile app install and ads in mobile apps, for app-focused campaigns

The YouTube side changes often. Demand Gen replaced video action line items, which were archived from 28 February 2026. From 26 October 2026, Google is archiving the remaining maximum CPV and single-format efficient reach line items in favour of video view and multi-format efficient reach. Check for these if you inherit an old account.

How does DV360 decide which impressions to buy?

For every impression, DV360 runs through the same short checklist. Here is the sequence for one ad slot on a news app:

1. A reader in Pune opens an article. The publisher's ad server or exchange sends a bid request with details such as the app, ad size, device, approximate location and any deal ID.
2. DV360 finds the line items that could buy it: the right geography, audience, device, content and inventory source.
3. It checks the limits. Has this person already hit a frequency cap at campaign, IO or line item level? Does the page pass the brand safety rules? Does the line item still have budget for the day?
4. It prices the impression. A fixed bid uses the CPM you set. An automated strategy estimates how likely this impression is to meet your goal and bids to match. On a Programmatic Guaranteed deal, the price was agreed in advance.
5. If DV360 wins, your creative is served and the impression is counted. Active View then measures whether it was viewable.
6. The result flows into reporting and back into the bidding model for the next impression.

All of this takes a fraction of a second.

How do deals and inventory sources work?

An inventory source is where a line item is allowed to buy. You can let it bid on public exchange inventory (the open auction), attach specific deals, or do both.

Deals are negotiated with the publisher. Guaranteed deals usually arrive as proposals that you review and accept in DV360, while preferred and private auction deals can be added with the deal ID the publisher shares. With PG, the publisher controls pacing, and the price is fixed once the deal is live.

The deal type also affects the platform fee. Google's DV360 fee has a higher rate for exchange inventory, including open auction and private deals, and a lower rate for YouTube and PG. Our guide to PG vs PMP vs open auction covers when each one makes sense.

How does bidding work in DV360?

You choose between a fixed bid and an automated strategy, which can be set on the line item or at insertion order level.

A fixed bid is a set CPM that DV360 will not go above for media cost. By default, optimised fixed bidding stops DV360 from paying the full bid when it doesn't need to. Fixed bids suit deals, tightly targeted buys and tests where you want price control.

Automated strategies calculate a bid for every impression. They fall into two groups. Performance goals maximise clicks or conversions, either while spending the full budget or while holding a target cost. Brand goals maximise viewable impressions, completed in-view and audible impressions, impressions viewable for at least 10 seconds, or optimised reach on connected TV. Google notes the algorithm can take up to four weeks to learn before you judge it. You can also write custom bidding scripts.

How do budgets, pacing and frequency work together?

The insertion order holds the money, and its line items share it. Pacing decides how fast it is spent:

• Even spreads spend steadily across the flight.
• Ahead spends a little faster than even, up to 120% of the prorated target, so you are less likely to underspend.
• ASAP spends as fast as inventory allows, which suits short bursts and narrow targeting.

Frequency caps can be set at campaign, IO and line item level, and serving stops as soon as the first cap is reached. The longest cap window is 30 days.

Here is an illustrative structure for a ₹15 lakh festive campaign for a jewellery brand in Tamil Nadu. The CPMs come from our planning ranges, not from quotes.

Impressions are budget divided by CPM, multiplied by 1,000. One campaign-level frequency cap then covers all three insertion orders, which is hard to do when each channel is booked separately. Before you commit to a plan like this, forecast impressions in DV360 to check that your targeting has enough inventory behind it.

How do measurement and reporting work?

DV360 measures three things: delivery, viewability and outcomes.

Delivery covers impressions, spend, clicks, video completions, unique reach and frequency. Viewability comes from Active View. Outcomes come from Floodlight conversion tags, created in DV360 or in Campaign Manager 360, and from a Google Analytics 4 link set up through the Floodlight configuration. YouTube campaigns can add Brand Lift studies when they meet the spend thresholds.

Reports sit under Reports, in the Instant & offline section. Instant reports show data straight away, and you can schedule them to arrive by email. Offline reports cover specific types, such as inventory availability and Floodlight, and can be scheduled or sent to BigQuery. Unique Reach Overlap reports show how many people saw ads across two channels or placements, which is useful when YouTube and OTT run together.

If we run your campaigns through our DV360 Managed Service or a Campaign-Based Engagement, you can follow them in our DV360 Reports Section without a DV360 login. It pulls delivery data from DV360 through its APIs and shows spend, reach, frequency and CPM, with reports by creative, audience, geography and channel.

Who does what: Google, the seat holder and the trader?

Three parties keep a DV360 account running.

• Google runs the platform, sets its policies and charges the platform fee.
• The seat holder holds the contract with Google, the billing and user access. That can be a large advertiser on a direct contract, an agency, or a company such as DV360 Account that holds a partner seat.
• The trader builds and optimises the campaigns. That can be your own team, the partner's team, or both together.

This split is why the same platform can be bought as a self-serve seat, a co-managed setup or a fully managed service. If your team is still learning, a co-managed DV360 account lets you work inside the account with specialists alongside you. Our DV360 pricing guide explains how fees differ across these models.

Why does a new DV360 campaign sometimes under-deliver?

Most under-delivery comes from settings, not from the platform. Check these first:

1. No approved creative. A line item can't serve until at least one of its creatives is approved.
2. Not enough time. Line items can take up to 24 hours to start serving after you activate them.
3. Too many small line items. Ten line items of ₹20,000 each learn more slowly than two of ₹1 lakh.
4. Caps stacked too tightly. A low line item cap under an even lower campaign cap can choke delivery.
5. Bids below the market. Fixed bids that are too low will underspend, and a private auction won't clear below its floor.
6. Dates that don't line up. A deal that runs on different dates from the IO leaves budget unspent.

For a hands-on build, follow our step-by-step guide to creating a campaign in DV360.

Next step

Want to see how your budget would split across YouTube, OTT and news before anything is built? Ask for a free media plan and a DV360 specialist sends a channel mix with estimated reach within one working day; our team can then set it up in DV360 for you.