DV360 Fees Explained: Platform Fees, Tech Fees and What Google Publishes

Google documents the mechanics of DV360 billing in detail in its Help Center. It does not publish the rates. The table separates the two, as checked on 9 November 2026.

Google describes the DV360 fee as "the rates your business pays to use Display & Video 360, calculated as a percentage of media spend" (Google DV360 Help). Some contracts calculate the fee dynamically. In that case the account shows "Automated Cost" next to the fee.

The rate depends on what you buy. Open auction, preferred deals and private auctions use the upper, exchange rate. YouTube & partners, Demand Gen and programmatic guaranteed use the lower, non-exchange rate (Google DV360 Help). So a plan that moves budget from the open exchange into guaranteed deals also moves it to a cheaper fee band. The deal types are explained in programmatic guaranteed vs PMP.

The fee cannot be edited by the buyer. It is a partner cost that Google adds to billable cost automatically, and it "does support a tiered rate structure" (Google DV360 Help). Tiers usually mean the rate falls as spend rises, but Google does not publish the thresholds.

Where the fee shows up in reports is a setting. A partner can tick "Automatically put platform fee as Media Fee 1". Then the fee is part of total media cost. If not, it appears only in billable cost (Google DV360 Help). Two teams can read the same campaign and see different "media" numbers because of this one box.

"Tech fees" is the buyer's word for everything that is neither media nor data. Google calls these partner costs: "any type of expense involved in running a campaign, other than the costs of purchasing impressions" and third-party audience data (Google DV360 Help). Examples include the DV360 fee itself, a third-party ad server and verification.

Each partner cost is either a fixed CPM fee or a percentage surcharge on media. Google caps the percentage field at 150% of media. An "Invoiced" box decides whether Google bills the cost or the vendor bills you directly (Google DV360 Help). The API lists who bills each type.

The rates for these vendors are set in your contracts with them, not by Google. The UK regulator found advertiser ad server fees equal to about 3% of total media spend in 2019 (CMA, Appendix R, 1 July 2020). It is the only public benchmark we found, and it is seven years old.

Third-party audience lists cost extra on every impression where they apply. Google's guidance puts the range at $0.50 to more than $2 CPM (Google DV360 Help). Two rules decide the bill:

1. Same provider, several lists: you pay for the most expensive single list that matches the impression.
2. Several providers: you pay "the combined cost of all audience lists that match a given impression" (Google DV360 Help).

Retail data works differently. Commerce audiences are billed "as a percent of media cost", and some carry a CPM cap. Google's own example is 15% of media cost with a $2.00 CPM cap (Google DV360 Help). The retailer sets the price; DV360 bills it and passes the fee back monthly.

Worked example. A line item buys 10 million impressions at a $6.00 CPM, which is $60,000 of media. It targets two lists from different providers, priced at $1.00 and $1.50 CPM. If every impression matches both, data costs $25,000, or 42% on top of media. Swap in a commerce audience at 15% with a $2.00 cap: the fee is $0.90 CPM, or $9,000. On $20 CPM streaming inventory the same audience would hit the cap at $2.00. All amounts are our arithmetic on Google's published rules (third-party lists; commerce audiences); the list prices are illustrative points inside Google's stated range.

Add the platform fee to see the full line. At a hypothetical 10% rate, inside the regulator's 5% to 15% range (CMA, Appendix R, 1 July 2020), the DV360 fee on $60,000 of media is $6,000. With the two data lists, data costs four times the platform fee. That is why the data rules deserve as much attention as the headline rate.

There are four public reference points. None is a current rate card.

The 20% to 30% figure covers both sides of a Google-to-Google transaction, the buy side and the exchange. It is not a DV360 fee alone. The Trade Desk comparison sits on The Trade Desk fees.

Scale explains why these numbers matter. Guideline data cited by PPC Land put DV360 at 41% of tracked global programmatic spend in Q1 2026, up from 34% in 2022 (PPC Land, 10 May 2026). That is a third-party estimate based on agency budgets it tracks, not a Google figure.

Many advertisers do not hold a DV360 contract. They buy through an agency or a certified Google Marketing Platform partner. Google certifies partners per country and looks at their "pricing practices", team size and certified staff (Google DV360 Help).

DV360 has tools for that middle layer. The partner revenue model lets an agency add its own markup as a CPM, a share of media cost or a share of total media cost (DV360 API v4, line items). An agency trading desk can also appear as a partner cost billed by the partner (DV360 API v4, PartnerCost). Both are legitimate, but they mean the "DV360 cost" on your invoice may include more than Google's fee.

The UK regulator measured agency fees at 4% to 14% of open display spend in 2019, with a weighted average of 5% (CMA, Appendix R, 1 July 2020). The full chain from advertiser to publisher is on the ad tech tax explained.

Billing count. From February 2027, DV360 and Campaign Manager 360 will bill display impressions on "begin to render" rather than on download. Google expects "a slight decrease in overall billed impression volume" (PPC Land, 29 September 2026). Rates do not change, but the count they apply to does.

Antitrust. In April 2025 the court ruled that Google's advertiser tools were not anticompetitive. The September 2026 remedies decision ordered changes to the publisher side (Alphabet 10-Q, Q3 2026). AdExchanger reported that DV360 "faces no such restrictions" as those placed on Google Ads (AdExchanger, 16 September 2026). The publisher view is in Google ad tech remedies explained.

Data partners. Walmart Connect announced on 11 June 2026 that its shopper audiences could target YouTube campaigns in DV360, with sales measured in Walmart's stores and online (PPC Land, 13 June 2026). Retail audiences like this arrive as commerce audience fees, under the percent-of-media rule above.

1. Open the partner settings. The revenue model and partner costs show the DV360 fee type, and Google's billing page links to steps for viewing "your current fee rates" (Google DV360 Help).
2. Pull a billing report. Compare billable cost with media cost per insertion order.
3. Check the Media Fee 1 setting. It tells you whether reports include the platform fee in total media cost.
4. List every partner cost and who bills it. Use the API types above to confirm which vendors invoice you directly.
5. Ask for the schedule in writing. Our DSP RFP template has the questions, including tiers, deal-type rates and data pass-through.

The rest of the series is collected in the in-house programmatic hub, including the Amazon DSP vs The Trade Desk comparison.

1. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "Partners in Display & Video 360" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/7622449?hl=en
2. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "Track partner costs" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/2696775?hl=en
3. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "How Display & Video 360 billing works" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/14985229?hl=en
4. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "Total media cost" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/3007271?hl=en
5. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "Billable cost" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/3189828?hl=en
6. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "Tips for using third-party audience lists" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/6212219?hl=en
7. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "About commerce audiences in Display & Video 360" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/16640028?hl=en
8. Google for Developers, DV360 API v4, "PartnerCost" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://developers.google.com/display-video/api/reference/rest/v4/PartnerCost
9. Google for Developers, DV360 API v4, "advertisers.lineItems" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://developers.google.com/display-video/api/reference/rest/v4/advertisers.lineItems
10. AdExchanger, "Google Opens Its Black Box And Shares Fees Across DV360, Google Ads And Google Ad Manager" (23 June 2020). https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-opens-its-black-box-and-shares-fees-across-dv360-google-ads-and-google-ad-manager/