10 Don’t-Miss DV360 Product Updates from Q1

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to get the latest updates in your inbox
After a brief code freeze during the end of Q4, Google returned, making some impactful updates in Q1 of 2020. We saw updates spanning reporting clarity, attractive new formats and audiences, and, most exciting for me, planning features to help buyers. This is a challenging time for all brands and buyers so we are here to help anyway we can. Try these new opportunities now to attain audiences. Or, try them once your media is back up and live.
  1. Gmail Reach Widget and Remarketing Gmail lets you reach your audiences during their everyday routines and only pay when someone shows real interest by engaging with your ad. Now you can estimate available reach and leverage your own first-party (1P) audiences on Gmail. Ads are prominently displayed at the top of the Social or Promotions, so the impressions in the Reach widget can be counted as 100% viewable. Who doesn’t love that?
When to Use
    • To leverage CPE billing events while reaching your qualified 1p audiences at the same time (something basic programmatic inventory can’t always accommodate). 
    • When you are getting started in Gmail and aren’t sure how to estimate reach during planning. 
Note: 1P remarketing floodlights must be from Campaign Manager (CM) and not Display & Video 360 (DV360). CM tracking ads can only be leveraged if they are from the CM account linked in your DV360 advertiser.
  1. Planning Tool Updates Ever felt lost when trying to plan out a programmatic campaign? DV360 can help! The new planning tool in DV360 now offers forecasting estimates for Uniques and On-Target reach for YouTube and open auction Display and Video Line Items.
When to Use
    • To understand how many people within your target audience you can reach in an upcoming campaign.
    • To leverage online video as an extension of your TV campaigns and understand what that additional reach will be.
Note: Plans have been moved to the Inventory Module of your Advertiser and Campaign.
  1. Insight into Inherited Settings As you build out campaigns, DV360 now provides insights into which settings will be inherited later in the hierarchy and may impact serving. Look out for these messages. They appear next to a “gear” settings icon. The hints also provide insight into situations where DV360 settings won’t be carried over and you will need to manually apply targeting to further levels of the hierarchy.
When to Use
    • When you are unsure if a setting will carry over from the Partner, Campaign or Insertion Order to the next level.
    • To avoid simple, manual mistakes when targeting is not applied where it is believed to be.
  1. Customer Match Audiences Beyond YouTube “Bring Your Own Data” is becoming more widely accessible in DV360 with Customer Match now available across additional formats like Display, Video and Gmail. Customer Match enables advertisers to upload their 1p customer data and match it against Google users. This will be critical this year as we see the deprecation of third-party cookies. Even better, the Similar Audience feature is available for Customer Match so you can create Look-a-Like audiences from your own data as well.
When to Use
    • To re-engage with lapsed customers or improve current customer retention.
    • To reach customers who converted off of your website and/or offline.
    • To drive consideration of Product “X” among existing customers of Product “Y”.
Considerations
    • Customer Match is not compatible with third-party ad serving and ad tracking.
    • CM ad tracking and ad serving is the only exception.
    • This feature is not available across cross-exchange inventory all for data types.
  1. Automated Bid Strategies Enhancements DV360 has long offered automated bidding technologies to leverage Google’s machine learning algorithms in place of manual buyer optimizations. Now buyers can navigate this feature through a simplified set-up with streamlined indicators.
When to Use
    • When you have historical campaign learnings and prefer DV360 make bid adjustments toward your performance goals rather than make manual adjustments.
    • To grow campaign setup confidence in beginner DV360 buyers now that the user interface is easier to understand.
  1. Audience Builder Section Update Combined Audiences and audience targeting workflows now allow for more unique and tailored audience creation. Combined audiences are now able to “AND” together Google audiences with 1p audiences. It is now easier to visualize, work through boolean logic and target multiple combined audiences all at once using audience targeting at the Insertion Order and Line Item level.
When to Use
    • When there are more valuable campaign audiences than the standard 1P, third-party and Google Affinity/In-Market options.
    • When you are interested in testing customized and unique audiences.
    • When you want to layer Google data with your 1p data to target your niche audience.
  1. Combined Tab Becomes Default Tab Designed to ease and expedite your campaign analysis, the revamped Combined tab will become the default view for a complete picture of campaign performance. You can expand all Insertion Orders, easily filter, open new tabs and create new Line Items all from one screen. Soon you will be able to find real-time statistics from the last hour of delivery in the new “Summary” tab. Don’t worry, the same critical Performance, Pacing, Quality and Optimization views from the Insertion Order and Line Item tabs are still intact.
When to Use
    • To make a new Line Item within a live campaign quickly.
    • To see real-time performance data.
    • To understand, at a high level, where performance and pacing adjustments need to be made.
  1. Reporting Nomenclature Updates Many metrics and dimensions are being renamed in DV360 and Campaign Manager reports. Most of them are only related to TrueView, Audio and Video Companions and Google simply aligned the names to be a more accurate representation of what they are. For instance, TrueView is now listed as YouTube.
Specific examples include (listed as the old metric name)
    • Companion Impressions (Audio)
    • Companion Impressions (Video)
    • Video Companion Creative
    • Video Companion ID
    • Video Companion size
    • TrueView: Views
    • TrueView: View Rate
    • TrueView: Revenue eCPV (Adv Currency)
Why This Is Important You will need to update any variables that pull in data based on names in your report to ensure data accuracy and report functionality.
  1. Deprecated “Invoiced” Partner Cost for IAS and DoubleVerify Google is no longer collecting payments via invoiced partner costs to pay IAS and DoubleVerify on a buyer’s behalf. Buyers will need to pay the vendor directly for any non-prebid IAS and DoubleVerify usage.
Why This Is Important Buyers potentially need to update costs and budgets within any campaign previously using the invoiced partner costs to ensure money is withheld to pay IAS or DoubleVerify. Also consider regrouping with your IAS or DoubleVerify rep to align billing processes and contracts.
  1. Automatic Deals Deprecation DV360 began the process of deprecating autotargetable ("automatic") deals. Autodeals are now hidden at the Partner level and cannot be subscribed or unsubscribed to. Existing and new Line Items, Insertion Orders, and Campaigns have automatic deals deprecated. You can now find pre-existing targeted auto deals that are currently subscribed to in targeted “Deal Groups”. They will be applied to any new Campaigns.
Why This Is Important Many DV360 users leverage autodeals for additional reach opportunities outside of the open marketplace. Read below for why this update is ultimately a better fit for DV360 buyers.  Consideration Although automatic deals provided additional scale opportunities, they also provided complications. If an automatic deal was appended to a private deal Line Item then the integrity of intended targeting was compromised and a buyer would no longer be targeting just the desired deal. Plus, each automatic deal had its own floor price, creative type, publisher requirements and more. If your creatives and setup didn't match the automatic deal, it could mislead the impressions lost widget or campaign troubleshooter. This will not be a loss of valuable inventory, rather an opportunity to strategically opt-in to auction packages and 1:1 deals with publishers that closely align with your campaign goals. Contact your Adswerve account representative or email us at contact@adswerve.com to learn how to implement these new features and more. And don’t forget to download our DV360 ebook for additional details and helpful tips.