White-Label Programmatic Advertising Services for Agencies

Clients now ask their agencies for things that were rare a few years ago: ads on JioHotstar during a cricket series, connected TV in metro homes, Hindi news sites across the heartland, airport screens in Bengaluru. An agency that says "we don't do that" risks losing the brief to someone who does.

Building your own programmatic desk is one answer. It means DSP access, traders, publisher deals and reporting, all before the first campaign earns anything. White-label programmatic is the other answer, and for many agencies it is the faster one.

What is white-label programmatic advertising?

White-label programmatic advertising is an arrangement where a specialist partner plans and runs programmatic campaigns for your clients, while your agency owns the client relationship. You take the brief, shape the strategy, present the plan and stay the client's main contact. The partner does the execution behind you.

What white-label never means is changing the numbers. Your client sees real delivery: real spend, impressions, reach and completion rates. The only thing that is white-label is who fronts the relationship.

Under the hood, this is usually a managed service. Our guide on what to expect from a managed DV360 service covers its scope and fees in more detail.

How is white-label different from a child seat or co-managed setup?

All of these let an agency offer DV360 to clients. The difference is who does the daily work.

Many agencies move down this table over the years. Our explainer on child seat and partner accounts covers the last two rows.

Who does what in a white-label setup?

A clear split avoids most problems. A typical one looks like this.

Your agency:

• owns the client relationship, the brief and the strategy
• supplies creatives, or coordinates with the client's creative agency
• approves plans, budgets and any big changes
• presents results and recommendations to the client

The partner:

• turns the brief into a media plan with inventory, rates and estimated reach
• sets up Programmatic Guaranteed and private deals with OTT apps, publishers and DOOH networks
• builds the campaigns in DV360, places tags and checks creatives
• watches pacing daily and optimises through the flight
• provides reporting built on real delivery data

Write the split down before the first campaign, including who answers the client's questions while the campaign is live.

How does a white-label campaign work, step by step?

Here is how it runs with us. Most good partners work in a similar way.

1. Share the brief. Send your client's goal, audience, markets, budget and dates, or ask for a free media plan as the starting point.
2. Get a plan and quote. We confirm inventory, final rates and timelines. Premium OTT and festive dates need the most notice.
3. Approve and prepay. Your agency approves the plan and creatives. Campaigns are prepaid before they go live, which lets us book premium inventory and launch quickly.
4. Launch. We set up the deals, targeting, frequency caps and brand safety settings, then go live.
5. Optimise and report. We watch pacing daily and adjust through the flight, and you follow delivery in our DV360 Reports Section.

How should reporting work with your clients?

Reporting is where white-label arrangements earn trust or lose it. The rule is simple: the numbers your client sees should be the numbers DV360 recorded.

Our DV360 Reports Section pulls delivery data from DV360 through its APIs. It shows spend, impressions, unique reach, frequency, CPM and video completion, with breakdowns by creative, audience, geography, channel and placement, and it updates once a day. Your agency gets its own login. We can also set up a login for your client with access to just their advertiser, so they can check their campaign whenever they like.

Your agency's value sits on top of that data: what the results mean for the brand, what to change next, and how programmatic fits with the client's TV, social and search plans.

Worked example: a festive burst for a regional FMCG client

Here is an illustrative plan. The rates are indicative, drawn from our rate card ranges, and would be confirmed before launch.

Your client, a snacks brand selling across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, wants ₹20 lakh for a three-week festive burst in Tamil and Telugu.

Each line uses the same formula: impressions = budget ÷ CPM × 1,000.

Your agency's job here is the brief, the creative cuts in both languages (six-second bumpers for YouTube and 15 or 20 second spots for OTT), the approvals and the client conversation. The partner's job is checking Sun NXT and aha availability for the dates, setting up the deals, applying one frequency cap across OTT and YouTube, pacing the budget and producing the reports.

How do fees work in a white-label setup?

Your agency keeps its own agreement with its client. On our side, we agree our fee upfront and show it separately from media. Whichever partner you choose, ask for the same, as the checklist below suggests.

What should you check before choosing a white-label partner?

Ask these before you send the first brief:

• Does the reporting come straight from the DSP, and can your client have their own login?
• Which premium inventory can they actually buy, which OTT apps, publishers and DOOH networks, and at what minimums?
• Are media cost and the partner's fee shown separately?
• Who owns each client's audiences, reports and campaign history, and can they be exported?
• How quickly do they respond to a brief, and how much notice do festive campaigns need?
• What brand safety settings and verification do they use as standard?
• Will they stay in the background with your client unless you ask them to join a call?

Those questions are specific to white-label. The wider selection process, including how to run a trial campaign, is in how to choose a programmatic advertising agency, and if you are still weighing white-label against other kinds of partner, our comparison of programmatic partner types lines them up.

When is white-label not the right fit?

White-label suits most agencies that are starting out in programmatic, but not every situation.

• If a client wants its own team working hands-on inside DV360, a self-serve or co-managed setup fits better.
• If your agency already has trained traders, a child seat account gives your team more control over day-to-day buying.
• If programmatic spend across your clients is large and steady all year, building your own capability may pay off over time. Co-managed is a sensible bridge, because your people learn on live campaigns.
• If a client only needs a small, short push, programmatic may not be the right channel yet. Be honest about that, and the client will trust your next recommendation more.

What mistakes do agencies make with white-label programmatic?

• Promising the client results before the plan and rates are confirmed.
• Briefing late for Diwali or a big cricket series, when premium OTT inventory sells out early.
• Sending creatives in the wrong sizes or lengths a few days before launch.
• Leaving the approval flow vague, so changes stall in the middle of a flight.
• Treating programmatic as a black box. Read the reports yourself every week, so you can explain them to your client with confidence.

Next step

If your clients are asking for OTT, CTV, YouTube or publisher campaigns, see how our DV360 Managed Service runs them, then send us one client brief through our contact page. We usually reply within one working day with next steps.