Last reviewed: September 16, 2026
Display & Video 360 can report hundreds of dimensions and metrics. The difficult part is not exporting more columns. It is choosing the measurements that answer the campaign’s actual business question.
A useful DV360 report should connect delivery, media quality, audience exposure, engagement and business outcomes. It should also make clear which conversion activity, attribution model, date range, currency and cost definition are being used.
This guide explains the DV360 reporting metrics that matter most, how to calculate and interpret them, and which optimization actions each metric can support. If you are still deciding whether the platform fits your media strategy, review our Google Display & Video 360 service overview.
Quick answer: Do not evaluate a DV360 campaign with one universal KPI. Use impressions, spend and pacing to confirm delivery; viewability, completion rate and invalid-traffic indicators to assess media quality; reach and frequency to measure audience exposure; and CPA, conversion value or ROAS to evaluate outcomes. Always segment the result by line item, creative, inventory source, device, geography and audience before changing bids or budgets.
DV360 Metrics at a Glance
Business question | Primary metrics | What they reveal |
|---|---|---|
Is the campaign delivering? | Impressions, spend, pacing, win rate | Whether budget, bids, inventory or targeting are restricting delivery |
Are we buying quality exposure? | Viewable impressions, measurable impressions, viewability rate, invalid traffic | Whether ads had a reasonable opportunity to be seen and whether traffic quality requires investigation |
Are users engaging? | Clicks, CTR, video starts, quartiles, completes, VTR | How creative and placements generate interaction or attention |
Are we reaching enough people? | Unique reach, average frequency, incremental reach | How broadly and repeatedly the audience is being exposed |
Are campaigns producing outcomes? | Conversions, CVR, CPA, conversion value, ROAS | Whether media is contributing to the defined business actions |
Which components should change? | Segmented KPI results | Which line item, creative, audience, exchange, device or market is driving the result |
Before Reading a DV360 Report
Confirm the Campaign Objective
A campaign optimized for completed video views should not be judged primarily by click-through rate. A prospecting campaign designed to create incremental reach should not be held to the same CPA expectation as branded retargeting.
Define one primary KPI and a small set of guardrail metrics before launch. For example:
Awareness: unique reach or viewable impressions as the primary KPI; frequency and CPM as guardrails.
Video: completed views or video completion rate as the primary KPI; cost per completed view and viewability as guardrails.
Traffic: qualified sessions or landing-page actions as the primary KPI; CTR and CPC as diagnostic metrics.
Lead generation: qualified leads or CPA as the primary KPI; conversion rate and lead quality as guardrails.
Revenue: conversion value or ROAS as the primary KPI; CPA, margin and incrementality as guardrails.
Confirm the Measurement Definition
Before comparing two rows or time periods, confirm that they use the same:
Advertiser and partner scope
Date range and reporting time zone
Currency
Cost definition
Floodlight activities or conversion actions
Attribution model and lookback windows
Post-click and post-view inclusion rules
Filters, exclusions and data freshness
Important: A conversion count is not self-explanatory. A report must identify which action counted as a conversion and whether the result includes post-view conversions, post-click conversions or both.
Delivery and Cost Metrics
Impressions
An impression records an ad served under the platform’s reporting rules. It is the foundation for CPM, CTR, frequency and many video metrics, but it does not prove that a person saw the ad.
Use impressions to answer:
Is the campaign spending and serving?
Which line items, exchanges, devices and markets are receiving delivery?
Did a targeting, creative or inventory change affect scale?
If impressions are low, inspect budget, pacing, bids, targeting size, inventory eligibility, creative approval and frequency caps before assuming the audience is uninterested.
Media Cost and Total Cost
Cost reporting must be defined clearly. Depending on the report and account setup, a cost column may represent media cost, platform cost or a broader advertiser cost that includes selected fees. Agency fees billed outside the platform will not automatically appear in DV360.
Before presenting ROI or ROAS, confirm which cost field is used and whether all relevant data, verification, platform and service fees are included.
CPM - Cost per Thousand Impressions
Formula: CPM = Cost ÷ Impressions × 1,000
CPM shows how much the advertiser paid for one thousand impressions. It is useful for comparing buying efficiency across inventory, formats and audiences, but a low CPM is not automatically a good result. Cheap impressions can have weak viewability, poor audience relevance or low conversion quality.
CPC - Cost per Click
Formula: CPC = Cost ÷ Clicks
CPC is useful when the campaign is expected to generate site visits. Interpret it with landing-page engagement and downstream conversion quality. A low CPC can be misleading if accidental or low-intent clicks dominate.
Pacing
Pacing compares actual delivery with the budget and flight schedule. Underpacing may indicate bids that are too low, restrictive targeting, limited eligible inventory, creative issues or aggressive frequency caps. Overpacing may exhaust budget before the campaign can learn or before higher-value periods arrive.
Win Rate
Win rate indicates how often eligible bids win available auctions. A low rate can point to bid competitiveness, inventory constraints or deal-floor issues. Interpret it alongside budget, pacing and impression volume; increasing a bid without examining inventory quality can raise cost without improving outcomes.
Engagement Metrics
Clicks and Click-Through Rate
Formula: CTR = Clicks ÷ Impressions × 100
CTR measures the share of served impressions that generated a click. It is most useful as a creative and placement diagnostic for click-oriented campaigns. Compare it within similar formats and devices rather than applying one benchmark to display, native, video and connected TV.
CTR is not a suitable primary KPI for every programmatic campaign. Connected-TV and awareness campaigns can influence later behavior without producing an immediate click.
Post-Click Quality
DV360 clicks should be evaluated with analytics and site outcomes. Useful post-click checks include engaged sessions, landing-page conversion rate, form starts, successful submissions, product views and qualified lead rate.
If CTR increases while qualified actions fall, the creative or placement may be attracting curiosity rather than relevant demand.
Viewability and Media-Quality Metrics
Measurable Impressions
Measurable impressions are impressions for which viewability could be determined. The measurable rate matters because viewability conclusions are less reliable when a large share of impressions cannot be measured.
Viewable Impressions
Viewable impressions meet the applicable measurement standard recorded by the platform. They are a stronger exposure indicator than served impressions, but they still do not prove that a person paid attention to the ad.
Active View Viewability Rate
Formula: Viewability rate = Viewable impressions ÷ Measurable impressions × 100
Use viewability to compare placements, publishers, exchanges, creative sizes and devices. Do not optimize for viewability in isolation. Extremely viewable inventory can still be overpriced, irrelevant or ineffective.
Cost per Viewable Impression
For awareness buying, compare the cost of viewable exposure rather than relying only on CPM. A placement with a higher CPM can be more efficient if it produces substantially more viewable impressions.
Formula: Cost per 1,000 viewable impressions = Cost ÷ Viewable impressions × 1,000
Invalid Traffic
Invalid-traffic indicators help identify activity that may not represent legitimate human exposure. Review unexpected changes by exchange, publisher, app or site, device, geography and line item. A suspicious result should be investigated rather than automatically interpreted as campaign success or failure.
Video and Connected-TV Metrics
Video Starts and Quartiles
Video reporting commonly includes starts and progress milestones such as 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% completion. The drop-off pattern helps distinguish an opening-hook problem from a broader relevance or placement problem.
A sharp drop before 25% can signal a weak opening, poor contextual fit or forced exposure.
Strong early retention with weak completion may indicate that the video is too long or loses clarity.
High completion with weak business impact may mean the placement delivers passive viewing but insufficient persuasion.
Video Completion Rate
Formula: Video completion rate = Completed views ÷ Video starts × 100
Video completion rate should be compared within similar duration, format, device and inventory environments. A six-second asset and a 30-second connected-TV ad should not share the same expectation.
Cost per Completed View
Formula: Cost per completed view = Cost ÷ Completed views
This metric combines price and completion performance. It is useful when completed exposure is the objective, but it should still be paired with reach, frequency and audience-quality checks.
For a wider planning framework, see our connected-TV advertising solution.
Reach and Frequency Metrics
Unique Reach
Unique reach estimates the number of distinct people or households exposed to the campaign, depending on the report and available identity signals. Use it to understand whether additional impressions are finding new audience members or repeatedly reaching the same group.
Average Frequency
Formula: Average frequency = Impressions ÷ Unique reach
Frequency must be interpreted over a defined time period. An average frequency of four in a day has a different meaning from four across a month.
High frequency with flat reach can indicate audience saturation, narrow targeting or repeated delivery to low-cost inventory. Low frequency may limit message retention in an awareness campaign.
Incremental Reach
Incremental reach asks how many additional people a tactic, channel or inventory source reached beyond the existing plan. This is especially important when evaluating connected TV, YouTube and open-web video together.
Conversion and Revenue Metrics
Floodlight Conversions
Floodlight activities define which actions are measured as conversions in the Google Marketing Platform environment. Examples can include form submissions, purchases, registrations or other meaningful actions.
Audit Floodlight configuration before using conversions as a primary KPI:
Does the activity fire only after a successful action?
Can a refresh or repeated visit create duplicate conversions?
Are test, internal and staging environments excluded?
Are transaction IDs and revenue values passed correctly?
Are the activity and attribution settings appropriate for the business decision?
Conversion Rate
Formula: Conversion rate = Conversions ÷ Clicks × 100
This click-based formula is useful for traffic-oriented analysis, but it does not describe view-through contribution. State the denominator and attribution scope whenever conversion rate is presented.
CPA - Cost per Acquisition
Formula: CPA = Cost ÷ Conversions
CPA is only meaningful when the conversion action is valuable and consistently measured. A low CPA for an unqualified form submission may be worse than a higher CPA for a sales-qualified lead.
Conversion Value and ROAS
Formula: ROAS = Conversion value ÷ Cost
ROAS depends on complete and trustworthy revenue data. If the reporting tag captures only a subset of transactions, omits cancellations or uses the wrong currency, the result will be misleading.
ROAS is not profit. To understand business impact, incorporate product margin, fulfilment, discounts, returns, agency costs and other relevant expenses outside the media platform.
Post-Click and Post-View Conversions
Post-click conversions follow an ad click. Post-view conversions occur after an impression without a recorded click, within the selected attribution rules.
Do not combine or compare them without context. Post-view performance can be valuable for upper-funnel media, but it needs appropriate attribution settings and, where possible, incrementality validation.
DV360 KPI Formula Reference
Metric | Formula | Primary use |
|---|---|---|
CTR | Clicks ÷ Impressions × 100 | Creative and placement engagement |
CPM | Cost ÷ Impressions × 1,000 | Cost of delivered scale |
CPC | Cost ÷ Clicks | Cost of site traffic |
Viewability rate | Viewable impressions ÷ Measurable impressions × 100 | Opportunity to see |
Viewable CPM | Cost ÷ Viewable impressions × 1,000 | Cost of viewable exposure |
Video completion rate | Completed views ÷ Video starts × 100 | Creative retention |
Cost per completed view | Cost ÷ Completed views | Efficient completed exposure |
Average frequency | Impressions ÷ Unique reach | Exposure intensity |
Conversion rate | Conversions ÷ Clicks × 100 | Click-to-action efficiency |
CPA | Cost ÷ Conversions | Cost per measured outcome |
ROAS | Conversion value ÷ Cost | Attributed revenue efficiency |
AdGeeks can help audit your Floodlight setup, reporting structure, KPI definitions and optimization workflow.
How to Diagnose DV360 Performance Step by Step
1. Check Delivery Before Performance
Review budget, spend, pacing, impressions and win rate. If the campaign is not entering or winning enough eligible auctions, conversion metrics do not yet explain the root problem.
2. Check Media Quality
Review measurable impressions, viewability, invalid traffic and inventory-level results. Separate a buying-quality problem from a creative or offer problem.
3. Check Reach and Frequency
Determine whether the campaign is finding new users or repeatedly serving the same people. Inspect the time window before adjusting caps.
4. Check Creative Engagement
For display, compare CTR and post-click quality. For video, examine the full quartile curve, completion rate and cost per completed view. Segment by asset, format and device.
5. Check Conversion Integrity
Confirm that Floodlight activities fire on real outcomes, revenue values are accurate and attribution settings are understood. Do not optimize toward a broken or overly broad conversion action.
6. Segment Before Acting
Break the primary KPI down by:
Insertion order and line item
Creative
Audience
Exchange, publisher, app or site
Inventory environment and deal
Device and format
Geography
Day and hour
Averages can hide both strong and weak pockets. Make budget, bid, targeting and creative changes at the level where the evidence appears.
7. Change One Major Variable at a Time
Document the hypothesis, change, date and expected impact. Allow enough volume and time before declaring success. Simultaneous changes to bids, targeting, inventory and creative make the result difficult to interpret.
Common DV360 Reporting Mistakes
Using CTR as the Universal KPI
CTR is useful for click-oriented formats but weak as the primary measure for connected TV, awareness and many video campaigns.
Comparing Incompatible Rows
Different devices, formats, markets and attribution settings can produce structurally different performance. Normalize the comparison before drawing a conclusion.
Optimizing to Cheap Inventory Alone
Low CPM or CPC does not guarantee quality. Pair cost metrics with viewability, reach, post-click quality and conversions.
Ignoring Attribution Windows
Two reports can show different conversion totals while both are technically correct if their post-click, post-view or lookback settings differ.
Treating Platform Revenue as Profit
ROAS does not account automatically for margin, returns, fulfilment or off-platform fees.
Reporting Without a Decision
A dashboard should explain what happened, why it likely happened, what will change and how the change will be evaluated. A large export is not automatically useful reporting.
Recommended DV360 Reporting Cadence
Cadence | What to review | Primary decision |
|---|---|---|
Daily | Spend, pacing, delivery, disapprovals, major anomalies | Protect budget and resolve delivery issues |
Weekly | Primary KPI by line item, audience, creative, inventory and device | Shift budget, refine targeting and rotate creative |
Monthly | Reach, frequency, conversion quality, attribution context and trend | Adjust channel mix and campaign strategy |
Quarterly | Incrementality, measurement design, partner costs and business outcomes | Validate the program and plan larger structural changes |
If you are comparing the platform with a simpler buying setup, read our DV360 vs Google Ads guide. For commercial planning, see the 2026 DSP pricing comparison. If direct platform contracting is not practical, compare agencies that provide Google DV360 access.
AdGeeks provides Google DV360 access through self-service, hybrid and managed models, with support for measurement, reporting and campaign optimization.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Most Important DV360 Reporting Metrics?
The most important metrics depend on the objective. Delivery campaigns need spend, pacing and impressions; awareness campaigns need reach, frequency and viewability; video campaigns need completion and cost-per-completed-view metrics; performance campaigns need qualified conversions, CPA, conversion value and ROAS.
What Is a Good CTR in DV360?
There is no universal good CTR. Performance varies by format, device, market, audience and inventory. Compare results with the campaign’s own historical baseline and with similar tactics. Use post-click quality to confirm that a higher CTR represents useful engagement.
What Is a Good Viewability Rate?
A suitable target depends on inventory, format, market and price. Viewability should be evaluated alongside measurable rate, CPM, audience quality and outcomes. The highest viewability rate is not automatically the most efficient buy.
What Is the Difference Between Served, Measurable and Viewable Impressions?
Served impressions record ad delivery. Measurable impressions are those for which viewability could be assessed. Viewable impressions meet the applicable viewability criteria recorded by the measurement system.
How Does DV360 Measure Conversions?
DV360 commonly uses Floodlight activities within Google Marketing Platform to record defined actions and apply the selected attribution settings. The accuracy of the result depends on correct implementation, deduplication, value capture and attribution configuration.
Why Do DV360 and GA4 Show Different Conversion Totals?
The platforms can use different attribution models, lookback windows, identities, time zones, conversion definitions and consent or modelling rules. Reconcile configuration before treating the difference as an error.
Should Post-View Conversions Be Included?
They can be relevant for video, display and connected-TV campaigns, but they should be reported separately or clearly labelled. Use sensible attribution settings and validate incremental impact when possible.
How Often Should DV360 Campaigns Be Optimized?
Delivery and anomalies should be monitored frequently, while strategic optimization should wait for enough data. The correct cadence depends on spend, conversion volume, campaign duration and the size of the change being tested.
Can DV360 Reports Include Agency Fees?
Some platform cost configurations can include selected fees, but charges billed outside DV360 will not appear automatically. State the cost field used and add off-platform costs when calculating complete business efficiency.
How Can a Team Get Access to DV360 Reporting?
Access can come through an eligible direct relationship or a qualified partner, depending on the organization and commercial setup. Confirm account visibility, data ownership, reporting permissions and fee transparency before selecting a provider.
Editorial Sources
Metric availability and naming can vary by report type, inventory, account configuration and product changes. Confirm current definitions in the relevant DV360 report and Google documentation before using a metric for contractual or financial reporting.
