Cost Transparency report

As a buyer, you can use the Cost Transparency report to break down media costs for each seller. With sellers that can confirm gross revenue, you can use this report to compare the media costs with the seller’s gross revenue. This ensures that there are no hidden fees taken by advertising platforms during the media buying process.

Benefits

The Cost Transparency report allows you to compare cost and revenue without revealing contractual details or risking user privacy.

How it works

For buyers

In Display & Video 360, the buyer runs a cost transparency report with the “Seller ID” dimension. This report breaks down the aggregate media costs by the ID for a seller. If you’re not sure of the publisher name for a seller ID, you can find it in the sellers.json file of the exchange.

For sellers

The seller runs a report with their SSP using the same time zone, currency, and date range. This report should break down the gross revenue by Display & Video 360 insertion order IDs. 

Display & Video 360 is working with ad management platforms, such as Google Ad Manager, to support cost transparency for sellers and publishers. Learn more about confirming gross revenue with Google Ad Manager.

Comparing reports

Once both reports have run, you can reach out to a specific publisher to compare the media cost from the Cost Transparency report and the gross revenue from the seller's report. This comparison allows you to check for unexplainable discrepancies for a specific insertion order.

Before you compare numbers 

To reduce discrepancies between the reports, keep in mind the following:

• Both reports should use the same date range, time zone, and currency to accurately compare cost and revenue.
• Invalid traffic, misaligned impression counting methods, insertion orders with less than 1000 impressions, time zone differences, and currency differences may cause discrepancies in the numbers.
• Discrepancies up to 3% between the cost and revenue is considered normal. 

Instructions to run a Cost Transparency report

Note that the Cost Transparency report should run at the insertion order level. 

1. In Display & Video 360, navigate to Reports > Instant & offline > Offline Reporting. 
2. Select a time zone. This should match the time zone for the seller’s report.
3. Select a date range. This should match the date range for the seller’s report.
4. Choose Cost Transparency for the report template.

   The following dimensions should be added:

   • Advertiser Currency
   • Partner
   • Insertion Order
   • Exchange ID
   • Exchange
   • Seller Id
   • Inventory Commitment Type
   • Inventory Rate Type

   The following metrics should be added:

   • Platform Fee (Advertiser currency)
   • Media Cost (Advertiser currency)
   • Impressions
   • Media Fee 1 (Advertiser currency)
   • Media Fee 2 (Advertiser currency)
   • Media Fee 3 (Advertiser currency)
   • Media Fee 4 (Advertiser currency)
   • Media Fee 5 (Advertiser currency)
5. Add a filter for a specific advertiser.
6. Add a filter for a specific insertion order.
7. (Recommended) Add a filter for a specific exchange.
8. Click Save and run to generate your reporting file.

Limitations

• The Cost Transparency report can’t be broken down further than the insertion order level. 
• Data for the last 7 days will not be available for reporting. Set the time range to before the previous 7 days. 
• A dash ( - ) in the report means that there are not enough impressions to return results for the selected dimensions. This may cause differences in the cost and revenue numbers. Try including more data or segmenting by fewer dimensions. 
• Outcome Based Buying (OBB) campaigns are not currently supported for Cost Transparency reports.
• The “Seller ID” dimension is not compatible with some metrics and dimensions, such as IVT metrics and Line Item dimensions.