Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) and its programmatic counterpart, Display and Video 360 (DV360), are a well-known dynamic duo in today’s digital marketing world. But have you ever taken a moment to think about the relationship between these two tools? We won’t blame you if you haven’t because, as the technical gurus working behind the scenes on these products here at Adswerve, we understand it is a relationship that is constantly evolving. 

Understanding this relationship can help you sort out your team’s process to configure your advertisers, prepare for post-campaign reporting and analysis, and execute a Floodlight strategy that’ll gather the insights you need. This article is meant to help you navigate the areas of these products that seem to elude those that use them the most. It will bring to light the benefits of linking DV360 to CM360 early on your advertiser’s lifetime, reporting on cost between the two products, how to cultivate a 1:1 relationship between CM360 placements and DV360 creatives and lastly, how Floodlight tags and Audience lists take shape across both tools. 

Benefits of Linking DV360 to CM360

Hosted Creatives in CM360 Are Automatically Shared With DV360

The first benefit is that when the two products are linked, they share a 1:1 relationship which results in a more improved and more efficient workflow. For example, placements in CM360 are automatically ported over into DV360 as creatives so there is no need to download a tag sheet and upload that into DV360 as your DSP. That process is taken care of for you. 

Utilize CM360 Floodlight Activities and Audiences

For some CM360 advertisers, their Floodlight strategy may be meticulously thought out and executed already. Linking DV360 to CM360 will reduce any extra work caused by creating a stand-alone advertiser in DV360. The Floodlight activities that exist in your CM360 advertiser will automatically be shared with the DV360 advertiser it is linked to, along with any corresponding audiences.

View DV360 Attribution Data in CM360

We know that first-party data will become crucial to tell a holistic attribution journey for how users interact with a brand. By trafficking your creatives in CM360 and linking the two products, it will allow you to gain insight into the DV360 initiatives that are contributing to conversion success and understand how your DV360 campaigns are helping influence your other channels and campaigns. 

Cultivating a 1:1 Relationship between Placements and Creatives

As a trafficker, there is nothing worse than completing a media campaign and realizing that you are not set up to receive the reporting outputs required to complete your analysis and share your insights. To properly achieve this reporting output when hosting creatives in CM360, you must first understand the terminology of the components on both sides and the levels of granularity that can be reached when reporting.

While this may be obvious to more seasoned users of DV360, CM360 placements port over into DV360 and are then categorized as creatives. These CM360 placements can be seen in the DV360 advertiser Creatives tab and in the Creative details section there will be a ‘CM360 ID’ that matches the placement ID in the CM360 UI. Depending on your programmatic strategy, you may want to take extra time to consider what level of granularity you will need to see in your reports both coming out of CM360 and DV360. It is important to keep in mind that you will be unable to select dimensions lower than a CM360 placement in conjunction with your DV360 line item reporting. 

1:1 Trafficking in CM360

When trafficking your CM360 placements, there are a few recommendations for creating a 1:1 relationship:

• If you would like to achieve a 1:1 relationship between your CM360 creatives and DV360 creatives, traffic one creative asset per placement in CM360
• Use specific naming conventions at the placement level to help identify the creative in reporting and while trafficking in DV360
• Ensure you are trafficking your placements under the correct CM360 site ID (we will get into this later in the post)
• Allow 48 hours for the CM360 placements to be ported over into DV360 and assigned to your line items

1:1 Trafficking in DV360

Below are the steps that we recommend in order to traffic one creative per line item:

• If you would like to achieve a 1:1 relationship between your CM360 placements and DV360 line items, traffic one CM360 placement (a.k.a. DV360 creative) to your line item
• Use specific naming conventions at the line item level to help identify the creative in reporting
• Once the creative is assigned to the active line item, allow 48-72 hours prior to campaign start date for the creative audit process to be completed

While we understand there may be exceptions to these practices, following them can help your campaign go off without a hitch while simultaneously gathering the level of insight you require for post-campaign analysis. 

The Process of Linking DV360 to CM360

Important: Not only do we recommend linking DV360 to CM360 for a number of reasons that will benefit your programmatic campaign and its results, we recommend doing this when first creating your advertiser in DV360, regardless of if you believe you will use CM360 or not. The reason we recommend this is when an advertiser is created in DV360, you are required to make the link to the CM360 advertiser. If you create an advertiser in DV360 without linking it to CM360 and then later decide you would like to use CM360 to host your creatives, you will not be able to change it for this advertiser. You would need to create a new advertiser in DV360, causing a difficult decision if you have already run programmatic spend in the previous advertiser. There will be no way to connect the two advertisers’ reporting, campaigns, etc. On the flip side of this, if you link your DV360 advertiser to a CM360 advertiser, but never utilize CM360, there will be no downside to doing this.

Creating a New Advertiser in DV360

Now, to get to the nuts and bolts of how this link is created. To understand this, you must first understand that the link is created when the DV360 advertiser is first created. If you do not already have a CM360 advertiser created, this will be your first step (the CM360 IDs will be requested in the advertiser creation form). 

Once the CM360 advertiser is created, you are ready to submit the DV360 advertiser creation request to our support team. In the form, it will ask for the CM360 network and advertiser IDs, which are required to create the link in the DV360 advertiser Basic Details. 

Trafficking Placements in CM360

The additional piece of required information— and quite possibly the most critical piece—is the CM360 site ID. The site ID is associated with one specific directory site URL that allows for placements to be ported over as creatives in your DV360 advertiser. If the DV360 advertiser is created without the correct CM360 site ID or the placements are trafficked under the incorrect CM360 site ID, the CM360 placements will not be available as creatives when you go to traffic in DV360. 

When the Adswerve support team sends a confirmation email notifying you that the advertiser is created in DV360, they will include the CM360 site ID to traffic the placements under. If you do not have access to the advertiser Creation form, you may reach out to your account executive or support@adswerve.com for further assistance.

Viewing DV360 Cost in CM360

An area of the relationship between DV360 and CM360 that we receive several questions around is cost, and specifically how to report DV360 cost in CM360. To preface this, it is recommended to review spend in the product that the media is run in, as this will provide the most accurate information. There are often expected discrepancies between platforms so following this best practice is helpful.  For example, running a revenue report in DV360 to best understand your cost and media fees.

Users can, however, view high-level spend information in CM360. DV360 Advertisers that are linked to CM360 can access the cost of buying impressions through DV360 by pulling in the metric ‘DBM Cost’ into a standard report in the CM360 report builder. This metric differs from media cost in CM360 because DBM cost is the composite value that represents the amount of money spent to purchase impressions from exchanges, plus any additional markups from DV360, partners or third parties, as well as other costs. DBM cost in CM360 will show the a similar value that ‘Revenue’ in DV360 shows. Since DV360 is a separate entity from CM360 and the additional markups are configured in that product, using this metric is a great way to help estimate the holistic cost of your campaign in CM360.

There are some limitations to pulling in this cost since DV360 cost metrics are not compatible with DV360 dimensions and also will not be reported for wrapped creatives, YouTube or 1×1 pixels. In order to be able to view this data, there is a setting that will need to be selected in the advertiser’s basic details section called ‘Report Display & Video 360 cost to Campaign Manager 360’. This should be enabled by default, but our support team can certainly confirm this for you, if you suspect it is not selected. On the CM360 side, the user profile being utilized will need to have the ‘View Cost’ permission enabled.

Floodlight Activities and Audiences in DV360 and CM360

With the arrival of a new age in online advertising where having a first-party data strategy is critical, understanding how your CM360 Floodlight activities and audiences interact with DV360 will become a useful tool.

Floodlight Activities in DV360 and CM360

For many, Floodlight activities are a familiar concept but for those who are not acquainted, Floodlight tags are small bits of code implemented on the pages of an advertiser’s website that allow you to track and count conversion events. When using CM360 in conjunction with DV360, the Floodlight activities (as well as audience lists based on these floodlight tags) will need to be built in CM360 and shared with DV360. Upon attempting to create a Floodlight activity in DV360 when linked to CM360, you will find the ‘New Floodlight Activity’ button is greyed out and cannot be used. However, this saves time for you and your team since you will not need to have new tags placed on the site again, the same ones from CM360 will work in tandem with your DV360 ads that are served.

In order for your CM360 Floodlight activities to become available in DV360, the proper link must be established between the CM360 Floodlight Configuration and the DV360 advertiser. However, as mentioned above, this should be done when the advertiser is created. Once this link is created, it can take up to four hours for the Floodlight activities to show in DV360 and be applied at the line item level for conversion tracking. You may notice some differences in reporting on Floodlight activities from CM360 to DV360, since DV360 will only report conversions for Floodlight activities that are assigned under conversion tracking for each line item. Whereas Campaign Manager 360 will report all conversions that can be attributed to that advertiser. 

Audiences in DV360 and CM360

To fully utilize the data received from your Floodlight tags, CM360 has a feature that allows you to build audiences. Those audiences are then automatically shared with DV360 to be applied to your line item targeting. However, there are some thresholds that have to be met before the audience will be automatically ported over into DV360. 

Aside from the required 48-hour grace period, the audience will also need to have at least 100 members for it to show in DV360. Typically, we see this occur after the Floodlight activities begin to see Floodlight impressions in the thousands or conversions in the hundreds. I would like to emphasize that once these thresholds are all met, and it has been 48 hours, the audience will be available in the ‘All audiences’ tab. There is no need to create an audience in DV360 using the Floodlight activity in order to target these audiences. Similar to Floodlight activities, the audiences will need to be managed in CM360. You will be unable to make edits to the audience’s lifetime membership span, for example, within DV360.

While DV360 and CM360 are closely integrated, we understand that navigating their relationship can be an intricate process. I hope this will help you get started or at least help you and your team understand the questions to ask when approaching these two products. If you need any help, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to make your life easier.