Display & Video 360 RFP Template

Before You Issue a Display & Video 360 RFP

Programmatic RFPs live or die on transparency. Before comparing DV360 partners on strategy, pin down the economics: management fees as a percentage of spend or fixed, tech fees passed through at cost or marked up, and full log-level data access in an account you own. A partner reluctant to grant seat ownership and log access is telling you something important.

Then score operating discipline: brand-safety configuration, supply-path optimization, frequency management across devices, and a creative-testing cadence with actual statistical standards. Ask for the QBR deck they showed their last comparable client — the quality of that artifact predicts the quality of your next twelve months.

What the Display & Video 360 Sections Cover

• Seat and partner structure, and whose contract holds it
• Fee disclosure separating media spend from service
• Audience sources and the consent behind each one
• Brand safety, inclusion lists and fraud controls
• Programmatic Guaranteed and deal ID handling
• Reporting into your own warehouse, not just the UI

Writing the Display & Video 360 Scope of Work

The commercial architecture belongs in the scope, not in the contract schedule. State that the partner or advertiser seat is to be held in your name, that you retain the campaign history if the relationship ends, and that all platform, data and verification fees are disclosed at cost with any margin stated separately. Say whether the partner buys through their own seat or operates yours, because the two arrangements differ completely in what you can audit. If any inventory is bought from an arrangement the partner has a commercial interest in, that must be declared in the scope rather than discovered in a log file.

Scope data access deliberately. Log-level data delivered to storage you own, and the ability to query it independently, is what allows you to verify frequency, overlap, working media ratio and inventory quality rather than accept a summary. Say where those files land, how long they are kept and who may query them. If you intend to use a clean room for match analysis, name it and say who runs the queries. Data going the other way matters too: audience onboarding, customer lists and any first-party signal being pushed into the platform should be scoped with the consent basis stated.

Define the operating scope in campaign terms. State the markets, the channels including video, display, audio and connected television, the expected annual spend, the number of campaigns and the trafficking volume, because operational effort tracks these rather than budget alone. Name who produces creative, who trafficks it and who owns quality assurance before a line goes live. Brand safety and inventory quality configuration should be specified as a deliverable with a named standard rather than inherited from a template, including the block lists, the verification vendor and who authorises exceptions.

Define done for an always-on media engagement as a measurement and control arrangement rather than a launch. Reasonable criteria: conversion measurement is configured and reconciled against your own analytics with the discrepancy explained, frequency is measured and controlled across line items and channels rather than within them, a documented test plan is running, and reporting reaches business outcomes rather than stopping at platform metrics. Explicitly out of scope: creative production unless named, and any commitment to platform performance metrics that do not connect to your commercial results.

Requirements That Actually Separate Display & Video 360 Proposals

• Fee transparency in writing — require every cost to be itemised: management fee basis, platform fee, data and audience segment costs, verification, and any inventory margin, with a statement that nothing is retained beyond what is disclosed.
• Log-level data delivery — require raw impression and click level data to be delivered to storage you control, with a stated schedule and retention, so that verification does not depend on the partner's own reporting.
• Supply path reasoning — ask which exchanges and paths they buy through and why, what they exclude, and how they audit that a bid actually reached inventory through the path they intended.
• Frequency management across channels — require a description of how frequency is controlled for a single person across video, display and connected television, rather than capped separately within each line item.
• Inventory quality controls — ask for the specific block lists, allow lists and verification settings proposed for your brand, including who approves an exception and how made-for-advertising inventory is excluded.
• Audience onboarding basis — where first-party data is activated, require the consent basis, the matching method and the expected match rate, plus what happens to the data if the relationship ends.
• Incrementality approach — require a position on how the effect of the spend is measured beyond platform-reported conversions, including what kind of holdout or geographic test they would propose and what it costs.

Common Mistakes in Display & Video 360 RFPs

• ✕ Fee structures compared without surfacing markups on tech, data and inventory.
• ✕ The DV360 seat owned by the agency, so switching partners means losing your own campaign history.
• ✕ Brand-safety and supply-path settings accepted as defaults rather than configured and audited.
• ✕ Creative rotation called testing when nothing reaches statistical significance.
• ✕ Reporting on platform metrics (viewability, VCR) with no tie to business outcomes.

• ✕ Scoping conversion measurement through platform-attributed conversions alone, so every optimization decision is made on a view of performance that systematically favors the channels being measured.
• ✕ Leaving the audience segment data costs out of the budget, where third-party segment fees can consume a meaningful share of spend without ever appearing in the media plan the business approved.
• ✕ Handing creative specification to the media partner without an owner for quality, so assets are resized mechanically into every format and the weakest creative determines the result.
• ✕ Scoping connected television as another video channel, ignoring that measurement, frequency control and inventory transparency behave differently there and need their own controls.

Questions Worth Asking Display & Video 360 Vendors

1. Itemize every fee we would pay: management, tech, data, and any inventory arrangements.
2. Will the seat and log-level data live in our account, and do we retain everything if we part ways?
3. Show your brand-safety and supply-path configuration for a comparable advertiser.
4. Describe your creative-testing framework: cadence, significance standards, and a result that changed strategy.
5. Show a recent (redacted) QBR deck — how do you connect media metrics to business outcomes?

How to Weight the Display & Video 360 Evaluation

Weight commercial transparency as a primary criterion rather than a due diligence step. In programmatic buying the gap between gross and working media is the single largest determinant of what your budget achieves, and it is invisible unless the arrangement forces disclosure. A partner who volunteers a full fee breakdown and agrees to your seat ownership before being pressed is telling you more about the next two years than any strategy document.

Score verifiability above reported performance. Any partner can present favorable numbers from the platform that also serves the ads, so the criterion that matters is whether you will be able to check their claims independently using data you hold. Weight log-level access, clean room arrangements and willingness to be measured by your own analytics rather than by platform attribution.

Give operational discipline more weight than strategic presentation. Media outcomes are produced by trafficking accuracy, pacing management, exclusion hygiene and the unglamorous habit of checking what actually ran, and these are hard to demonstrate in a pitch. Ask for evidence of how the account is run day to day, and weight it above the quality of the thinking in the response document.