Custom creatives for Programmatic Guaranteed deals

Overview

Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals allow you and the publisher to determine if the creative for a deal is supplied and managed by the publisher or by you in Display & Video 360. A custom creative allows the publisher better control of the creative and to bypass Ad Manager creative and policy restrictions. The publisher's creative is served instead of a buy-side creative, enabling new possibilities for PG deals:

• You can now run custom, high-impact ad formats in programmatic deals. Most formats that work with traditional manual trafficking work with this method.
• You can access premium inventory and formats that were not previously available for programmatic buying.
• Because the publisher retains control of the creative that serves within their Google Ad Manager network, Ad Manager creative and policy restrictions are safely bypassed.

Process

1. Each proposal line item in Google Ad Manager is associated with a corresponding deal in Display & Video 360.
2. The publisher creates the Programmatic Guaranteed proposal in Google Ad Manager. Learn more about the publisher's process.
3. Navigate to Inventory > Negotiations in the left menu and find the proposal.
   • Review the rate and impressions.
   • Review and make sure the creative requirements (sizes) are correctly configured. The requirements for custom creatives cannot be changed once the proposal is finalized. If the creative requirements are incorrect in the finalized proposal, ask the publisher to start a new one with the correct requirements in its proposal line items.
   • Accept the proposal if all looks good. Learn more about negotiating deals in Marketplace.
4. Once you have accepted the proposal, configure the line item. Configuration triggers the creation of a creative in Display & Video 360, used for the purposes of click and impression tracking. A valid tracking creative must exist in Display & Video 360 before ad serving can start. The creative managed by the publisher in Google Ad Manager is used for ad serving and to render the ad. You can also choose to configure later. However if there is no tracking creative in Display & Video 360 by the start date of the campaign, ads will fail to serve even if there is a valid creative associated with the corresponding line item in Google Ad Manager.

   Note: When the tracking creative is created, it will start in pending status and will take up to 2 hours to be validated. Ad serving can't start until the tracking creative status is servable.

   • Choose Advertisers - First, select a default advertiser to setup your order with. Then, you may permission other/additional advertisers to target this order.
   • Partner Revenue Model - Set this up the same way as any other Programmatic Guaranteed deal.

Once the publisher finishes the process in Google Ad Manager, the deal will appear in My Inventory.

Note that creatives, tracking tags, and Floodlight activities all need to be sent to the publisher in order for custom creatives to run properly.

 Roadblock creatives

Roadblock creatives allow you to run multiple creatives together on a publisher's webpage. You and the publisher can negotiate on how the publisher-hosted creatives will be displayed (Creative source field):

• All or nothing: All creatives serve on a page or none of them serve (assuming all are eligible). This is ideal if creatives are part of a set that should be presented together.
• As many as possible: As many creatives as possible where sometimes only a subset of creatives will serve (assuming they are eligible). This is ideal if trying to serve in different environments (e.g. mobile as well as desktop, mobile may have fewer slots, but the buyer may still want to serve even if not every one of their creatives will appear). 

Note: Roadblocks do not guarantee exclusivity on the publisher's webpage