10 Don't-Miss DV360 Product Updates

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2019 was a year of change for both the digital marketing industry as a whole and for Google Display & Video 360 (DV360) specifically. And 2020 promises even more innovation!  We’ve rounded up our top 10 DV360 product updates from Q4 2019 that every ad buyer should know about. While this isn’t a comprehensive list of every new feature and update, we think it represents the most exciting new opportunities for buyers and the changes most likely to affect your current and future campaigns.  

NEW OPPORTUNITIES 

  1. Mobile Apps Line Item Type
Born out of advertisers’ difficulties with accurately buying and measuring mobile app inventory, this new line item type eases buyers’ setup through premium app inventory and provides a template to easily create mobile app opportunities. When to use?  
  • When you need to keep your desktop and app line items separate, as with verification or measurement studies and multiple KPIs per format
  • When you’ve had success with mobile app inventory on a current cross-platform campaign 
  • When you want to test the effectiveness of mobile app inventory but want to ensure you aren’t running on desktop or web inventory
 
  1. TrueView Line Items “Flight” Pacing
DV360 now has the option to spend a line item’s budget throughout the entire flight rather than simply on a per-day basis. This reduces the need for manual budget adjustments during the course of a campaign. When to use?  
  • When you have flights that last longer than one day
  • When you want to spend more time planning and optimizing campaigns and less time manually adjusting daily budgets 
Note: TrueView line items can also use “Even” pacing instead of “ASAP.”   
  1. Display Forecasting in Reach Planning
Open auction display inventory is now available in the reach planning tool, allowing you to forecast the reach, CPM and media cost of your campaigns — audience targeting included. The following formats are now available: display, video and TrueView. Audio and deals are also available, but with limited capabilities. When to use?  
  • When you want to know if you will be able to spend your budget despite specific targeting
  • When you know the target, flight dates and budget for your campaign and want an estimated CPM, reach and frequency
 
  1. Placement Targeting Option for TrueView Line Items 
The new placement targeting option for TrueView line items allows you to target popular content such as vlogs, unboxing, how-tos/tutorials, product reviews and gaming content. When to use?  
  • When you want to reach a large audience
  • When you want to raise brand awareness
  • When you want to stay on-trend with the most popular YouTube content
 
  1. Geographical Analysis 
Discover meaningful insights about your audience data without paying for additional partners or platforms with the launch of geographic analysis. Plan strategies with just a few clicks and low resource investment and avoid geotargeting delivery issues. Any first-party audience is available, so this can be valuable for homepage visitors, cart abandoners and converter audiences! When to use?  
  • When you need to know the geographic distribution and reach of your audiences
  • When you want to quickly assess where your most qualified users are and optimize your targeting strategy accordingly
 
  1. Pacing and Performance View Available in the Combined Tab 
From the combined tab, you’re able to use these views with data for insertion orders and line items in the same table to easily see and track spend and performance. It’s no longer necessary to click further into the DV360 hierarchy to see high-level performance metrics and identify potential health issues. When to use?  
  • When you want to save time by viewing overall performance across IOs and LIs
  • When you need to provide a quick snapshot of overall performance without using a data visualization tool
  • When you prefer to see performance and pacing for an insertion order and the line items within it all at once
 
  1. Conversational Ads for Clients with AdLingo 
AdLingo conversational ads are a new creative format that allows brands to serve a chat experience within an ad space. This is a competitive alternative to messenger ads (such as Facebook offers) and allows for social formats to be purchased within DV360. When to use?  
  • When a conversation is beneficial in driving brand awareness and interest, such as educating consumers on complex products or guiding their choice among a wide collection of products
 
  1. Best Practices Guides for TrueView for Action 
Google has created a new series of best practices and set-up guides that provide guidance on how to activate unique campaigns in DV360, including TrueView for action! When to use? 
  • When you’ve never used TrueView for action or just need a refresher
 

CHANGES TO KNOW ABOUT

  1. Changes to iPad Reporting and Targeting 
Safari will now render desktop websites instead of mobile-optimized websites on iPads running iOS 13 or later, so that traffic will now appear as “desktop” in reporting and targeting. Why is this important? If you run ads on Safari, it may skew the results of what devices and environments are performing best or how many dollars have been spent on certain devices. Because of the limited audience size, this isn’t likely to be a major area of concern, but it’s worth knowing about.  
  1. App and URL Targeting Expansion for Connected TV Devices
DV360 will automatically target a publisher’s connected TV app when you target a given website to ensure you are reaching all device types for that publisher. For example, if you target nytimes.com, DV360 will also target their connected TV app inventory.  Why is this important? If you do not wish to serve on connected TV inventory, ensure your device settings exclude it. Otherwise, you may end up serving in connected TV environments, especially when targeting a whitelist. Stay in the know! Contact your Adswerve account representative or email us at contact@adswerve.com to learn how to implement these new features and more in your DV360 campaigns.