How to Check Reach and Frequency in DV360

Where does DV360 show reach and frequency once a campaign is live?

A media plan gives you a reach target. DV360 tells you whether you are getting there, and the useful decisions in a brand campaign come from reading the gap between the two.

This guide covers the live half of the job. The planning arithmetic, such as turning a budget into reach or combining channels, sits in our reach and frequency calculator post, so we won't repeat it here.

Delivered numbers live in Instant reporting, under Reports. Add the Unique Reach metrics, mainly total reach and average impression frequency, and break them down by campaign or insertion order. Add the frequency distribution too. It shows how many people saw the ad once or more, twice or more, three times or more, which the average alone never tells you.

Ask DV360 for reach at the exact level you plan to quote, because a viewer who appears in three line item rows is still one person at campaign level. Save the report as well, so every weekly check runs on the same dimensions and filters. Building and scheduling it is covered in our guide on how to create DV360 campaign reports.

How far can you trust the reach figures on any given day?

Treat them as estimates that firm up over a few days.

• DV360 models unique people across devices rather than counting cookies, and on connected TV it allows for several people watching one screen.
• Reach and frequency can take up to three days to come through. A Monday look at "last 7 days" really covers four or five settled days.
• DV360 will only report most reach metrics over a window of up to 92 days, so an always-on brand needs monthly views.
• The models are built at country level. Reach for one city such as Indore or Coimbatore can wobble even when delivery is steady.
• Google revised its unique reach methodology from 13 January 2026, so a 2025 campaign is not a like-for-like benchmark.

How do campaign, insertion order and line item frequency caps work together?

DV360 lets you set a cap at three levels. A campaign cap covers every insertion order and line item in that campaign, and YouTube impressions count towards it. An insertion order cap covers the line items in that IO. A line item cap covers only that line item. Every cap that applies is checked before an ad is served, and the first one a person has reached blocks the impression.

Take a jewellery brand running a three-week Akshaya Tritiya push in Tamil Nadu and Kerala:

A heavy viewer could see 3 bumpers, 1 skippable ad and 1 OTT ad before the campaign cap stops everything at 5. Remove the campaign cap and that person could reach 7. Remove the IO caps as well and the YouTube line items alone could deliver 5.

Put the cap you promise the client at the level you report on: "no more than 5 a week" is one campaign cap, not five line item caps. DV360 caps can run for at most 30 days, so a promise such as "no more than 10 across a two-month flight" has to be set as a monthly or weekly cap. For Programmatic Guaranteed deals, DV360 applies campaign-level caps on a best-effort basis, so if a PG line on JioHotstar or ZEE5 needs firm control, agree frequency when the deal is set up.

Why can reported frequency go above the cap you set?

The report says 7.4, the cap says 3 a week, and someone assumes the platform has failed. The cause is usually one of these.

1. The time windows differ. A cap of 3 a week on a four-week flight allows up to 12 ads per device across the flight. If the report covers all 28 days, its frequency is a flight figure. Set the date range to one week before comparing it with a weekly cap, or use the 7-day average impression frequency metric, which already matches a weekly cap.
2. Caps count devices, reports count people. Caps work on the identifiers DV360 can see, such as a cookie or a device ID, while reach is modelled per person. Someone who sees you on a phone, a work laptop and the living room TV can be capped three separate times.
3. Only line item caps were set. Each line item keeps its own count, so three line items at 3 a week can reach one person 9 times.
4. PG lines ran past the campaign cap under the best-effort rule.

If none of these fits, check whether the brand runs more than one DV360 campaign. A campaign cap stops at the campaign's edge, so a festive campaign and an always-on campaign for the same brand keep separate counts.

How do you compare planned reach with what DV360 delivered?

If the target came from DV360 Plans, save the forecast file at launch and keep it with the brief. Our guide on forecasting impressions in DV360 explains how that forecast is built.

Then make sure the two sides are measuring the same thing.

• Plans shows on-target reach separately from total reach, and delivered total reach includes people outside your target. Compare the plan's total reach with delivered total reach, and keep on-target reach as the goal you report against.
• Use identical start and end dates, and leave out the last three days while they settle.
• Compare at state or country level, where the models are steadiest.
• Compare campaign with campaign, never a plan total with summed line items.

Check at fixed points, such as the end of week one and the midpoint, not every morning. Reach builds fastest early. In a four-week flight, cumulative reach at the halfway mark is usually well past half its final figure, because later weeks mostly find people already reached. So 50% of planned reach at the midpoint is a warning, not a pass.

Compare the shape as well. If the plan expected most people to see the ad three or more times and the distribution shows a long tail at one exposure, the campaign is spreading too thin even if total reach looks fine.

What does a mid-flight reach check look like in practice?

Here is an illustrative four-week pre-summer campaign for a ceiling fan brand in Gujarat, across YouTube and OTT deals. The DV360 forecast suggested a total reach of 20 lakh people at an average frequency of about 5 over the flight, on a ₹22 lakh media budget. The check runs on day 17, using settled data for days 1 to 14.

Spend is on track, so this is not a bidding problem. Frequency is: the average person has already seen more ads than the plan intended for all four weeks. The 1.35 lakh people at 10 or more are the clue: even at the minimum of 10 ads each, they took at least 13.5 lakh of the 50.4 lakh impressions served, more than a quarter of delivery.

The settings explained it. There was no campaign cap, the YouTube IO allowed 4 a week and the OTT IO allowed 3, so a heavy viewer could get 7 a week. The plan had assumed two or three.

On day 17 the team made only these changes:

1. A campaign cap of 3 a week, so YouTube and OTT share one limit.
2. Targeting widened from Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara to the whole of Gujarat, giving the cap new people to move impressions towards.

Going from an effective 7 a week to 3 is a bigger step than we would normally take. It was safe here because the plan had always assumed two or three a week, and the wider geography gave every line item fresh supply, so none of them was starved of impressions.

Bids, pacing and creative were left alone. The next check asks one thing first: did week three add noticeably more new people than week two? Our guide on measuring incremental reach shows how to read new reach week by week and what each channel added.

What should you change when reach or frequency drifts off plan?

Match the fix to the symptom.

Make only the changes the problem needs, note each one, and give them a week, since settings can take up to 24 hours to apply and reach up to three days to settle. Move caps in small steps, from 5 a week to 4 rather than 5 to 2, or you may starve a line item overnight. And when frequency is already high, don't add budget to fix low reach: more money on the same audience mostly buys repeat views.

For bids, pacing and inventory, our DV360 optimisation checklist covers the rest of the weekly routine.

How do you follow reach and frequency without a DV360 login?

With a self-serve DV360 account, a co-managed account, or an advertiser, child seat or partner account, you have DV360 access and can run every check above yourself.

When we run the campaign through our DV360 Managed Service or a Campaign-Based Engagement, there is no DV360 login. You follow delivery in the DV360 Reports Section, which shows unique reach and frequency next to spend, impressions, CPM and video completion, split by channel, creative, audience and geography. It updates each morning India time and picks up late DV360 corrections. Agencies can ask for a separate login per client, limited to that client's advertiser, and every figure is the campaign's real delivery.

Next step

If a live campaign shows high frequency and slow reach growth, talk to our team with your cap settings and a recent reach report, and we will suggest where to start. Planning the next flight? Work the numbers in our reach and frequency calculator post, or ask for a free media plan as a first draft.