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DV360 Campaign Structure Explained: Campaigns, Insertion Orders and Line Items
A clear map of how Display & Video 360 organises budgets, flights and targeting, and where each decision belongs before a campaign goes live.
Priya Raman
Sep 17, 2026 · 11 min read
Learn DV360 in 14 structured modules
Key takeaways
- DV360 has four levels: Partner, Advertiser, Campaign and Insertion Order, with Line Items doing the buying.
- Budgets and pacing live on the Insertion Order; targeting and bids live on the Line Item.
- Plan the structure from the media brief first, then build it in the platform.
01 Why structure matters
Every DV360 campaign is a set of nested decisions. Where you place a budget, a frequency cap or an audience determines how flexibly you can optimise later. A tidy structure makes reporting readable and lets you shift spend without rebuilding the campaign.
A poor structure has the opposite effect: overlapping line items compete for the same users, budgets pace unevenly and reports become hard to compare week to week.
02 The DV360 hierarchy
DV360 organises work into levels. Each level inherits settings from the one above and adds its own.
|
Level |
What it controls |
Typical owner |
|---|---|---|
|
Partner |
Account-level settings, billing and data access |
Agency or trading desk |
|
Advertiser |
Brand, creatives, floodlights and audience lists |
Account lead |
|
Campaign |
Goal, KPI, overall flight and frequency |
Media planner |
|
Insertion Order |
Budget segments, pacing and IO-level frequency |
Media buyer |
|
Line Item |
Inventory, targeting, bid strategy and creatives |
Media buyer |
03 Insertion orders: budget and pacing
Think of an insertion order as a wallet. It holds the budget for a flight and decides how quickly that money is spent. Splitting IOs by market, funnel stage or channel keeps each budget accountable to a single goal.
Put budgets where you want to make budget decisions, and targeting where you want to make targeting decisions.
04 Line items: where buying happens
Line items carry the settings that decide which impressions you bid on and how much you pay. Keep each line item focused on one audience and one inventory type so its results tell a clear story.
Fig. 1 — Line item targeting and bid strategy settings
05 A worked example
A sportswear brand runs a six-week awareness and consideration push in two markets. A clean build looks like this:
- One campaign with an awareness goal, a six-week flight and a weekly frequency cap.
- Two insertion orders, one per market, each with its own budget and even pacing.
- Within each IO, separate line items for prospecting, contextual and retargeting audiences.
- Video and display creatives assigned to the line items that match their format.
Pro tip Use a consistent naming convention such as Market_Stage_Audience_Format. It makes filtering and reporting far faster once a campaign scales.
06 Common mistakes to avoid
- Running several line items on the same audience and inventory, so they bid against each other.
- Setting frequency caps only at line item level and losing control of total exposure.
- Mixing awareness and performance goals inside a single insertion order.
Written by
Priya Raman
Programmatic trainer and former DV360 media buyer. Writes about campaign structure, bidding and measurement.
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