The pandemic altered the course of our lives drastically. There is no denying that digital media became more popular than ever before, and its consumption increased dramatically during the lockdown. Confined to their homes, people resorted to their screens for entertainment.  As most of the lockdowns are over and the world gradually heads towards normalcy, traditional TV consumption has also normalized. Connected TV usage, however, remains entirely above pre-pandemic levels, according to research conducted by Neilson.  Research reveals more than 400 million connected TV devices, paired with numerous options for streaming content. This allows consumers to have more options to choose from and provides brands with more opportunities to reach their target audiences.  Google has also jumped into the game by facilitating connected TV marketing through its Display & Video 360 (DV360) platform. Google has announced significant improvements to DV360’s forecasting tool, enhanced data reporting, and broader media access. 

What Exactly is DV360?

Before we dive into the utilities of DV360 and how it can enable you to support multicultural publishers, it is first essential to go over the tool’s basics.  Essentially, Display and Video 360 is an integrated platform that enables different teams to work together to execute end-to-end marketing campaigns.  It helps digital marketers manage ad campaigns and ads strategic planning, design to performance analysis, and overall campaign optimization. Marketers can leverage the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology used by the Display and Video 360 to conduct real-time bidding and audience targeting effectively.  Google’s Display and Video 360 consists of five different modules integrated to create a streaming media buying and optimization platform that is a holy grail for marketers worldwide. 

The Modules:

Google’s Display and Video 360 organizes around five modules that work together to provide you with control over the entire marketing campaign stages. The five modules are as follows:

Campaign Module

The campaign module is where you construct your media plan basics and manage it efficiently, from defining the budget to picking out the platforms that will display your ads.  The module equips with a combined view feature that enables you to see all the elements of your campaign in one place, making it significantly more comfortable to monitor the performance and make changes where needed. 

Audience Module

The audience module of the Google Display and Video 360 offers a centralized view of audiences, allowing you to manage the audiences for your campaigns conveniently. The interface is quite a user friendly and includes features such as the Audience Profile Analysis and the Activity Based Audience Builder that help you easily create audiences that are likely to increase conversions. 

Insights Module

The insights module of the Google Display and Video 360 is invaluable- as the name suggests, it provides you with essential reports containing information regarding your campaigns.  It enables you to access all your data in real-time and build graphs and tables within the module. You can then quickly act on the insights and optimize your campaigns accordingly. 

Creative Module

The creative module of the Google Display and Video 360 makes it significantly more comfortable for you to build and manage creative ads.  You can make engaging and innovative ads using the creative module’s Format Gallery to choose from various ad formats and customize them in the Ad Canvas.  The creative module also allows you to create multiple variations for each ad when targeting several audiences. This enables you to create personalized campaigns that can dramatically increase your conversions. 

Inventory Module

Google’s Display and Video 360 contains the inventory module, allowing the marketers to access premium digital inventory and directly negotiate deals with the top publishers within the Display and Video 360 Marketplace.  Google Display and Video 360 not only has a wide range of inventory but also has a significantly advanced fraud prevention strategy that prevents you from spending money on invalid clicks or harmful sites.  So, the modules of the Google Display and Video 360 work together to provide you with an enhanced marketing experience.  Are there any other reasons why Google Display and Video 360 is essential? Yes, certainly. 

Supporting Multicultural Publishers

A valuable plus point of the Google Display and Video 360 is that it enables you to support multicultural publishers, including those owned by Black and Latino communities. Google commits to support Black and Latino-owned publishers, which is why it is continually introducing new ways for marketers to discover and help a more diverse set of publishers in the Google Display and Video 360 Marketplace.  How does it do so? Well, there several ways: 

Auction Packages

When you access the Google Display and 360 Marketplace, you will find auction packages that indicate that they contain inventory from multicultural publishers. These publishers have opted to participate in this program and worked in coordination with the Google Display and Video 360 exchange partners, identifying themselves as being owned by members of multicultural communities. 

Properties

The same indicators used in Auction Packages also make properties owned by multicultural publishers more discoverable in the Google Display and Video 360 Marketplace. It enables you to conveniently detect and add those particular properties to your media plans. The auction packages and inventory from Black-owned publishers are available in the Google Display, and Video Marketplace Featured tab.  These features support multicultural publishers and do not permit marketers to personalize ads based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other such categories. The aim of these features of Google Display and Video 360 is solely to help marketers who would want to support businesses by self-identified members of multicultural communities find such inventory.  The support for multicultural publishers initiates by highlighting Black-owned publishers; however, Google plans to expand on to different groups. For Black-owned publishers, Google is working on Google Ad Manager, GumGum, Kargo, Magnate, TripleLift, Verizon Media, Xandr, and Yieldmo, to highlight this particular inventory in the Google Display and Video 360.  Undoubtedly, Google will continue to explore and uncover new ways to allow marketers to support a diverse set of publishers. 

Concluding Points

Google Display and Video 360 has innumerable benefits, the primary one being the simplification of the campaign process. It allows you to effectively manage programmatic campaigns from beginning to end, helping you build, manage, and report on campaigns.  Google Display and Video 360 also offers a wide range of entirely customizable features according to your needs. You could also customize the process of targeting by integrating with the Google Marketing Platform and Google as well as third -party data. This would enable you to build audiences that are highly relevant to your brand and minimize budget wastage.  Google has now also introduced features that allow you to easily distinguish and support multicultural publishers, which is undeniably imperative in these times.  Altogether, the features of Google Display and Video 360 work in coherence to help you attain your campaign and business goals.  If you have any questions or require assistance, feel free to contact us.