DV360 expands audience reporting to ten distinct categories

Google will expand the Audience List Type dimension in Display & Video 360's audience performance reporting by the end of 2025, according to an announcement published in the platform's Help Center. The current three-value classification system will expand to include ten distinct audience categories, providing advertisers with enhanced granularity for campaign analysis and optimization decisions.

The existing dimension limits audience classification to First party, Third party, and Bid manager values. The expanded framework will introduce seven additional categories: Agency, Commerce, Demographics, Affinity, In-market, Custom, Lookalike, and Unknown. According to the announcement, this expansion aims to provide "greater detail, improved accuracy, and future compatibility for new audience types such as Lookalikes and Commerce audiences."

The timing coincides with Display & Video 360's systematic modernization throughout 2025. Google made AI-powered Audience Personas available to all platform users on September 18, 2025, enabling natural language audience creation. The platform introduced targeting templates the same week, allowing marketing teams to create reusable sets of targeting criteria across multiple campaigns.

Technical implementation details

The expanded dimension structure addresses limitations in how Display & Video 360 currently categorizes audience segments for performance analysis. Advertisers working across multiple audience types have operated with minimal visibility into how different audience categories perform relative to each other. The current three-category system groups disparate audience types together, preventing detailed performance comparison between affinity segments and in-market audiences, for example.

Commerce audiences represent a notable addition to the dimension taxonomy. The category reflects the advertising industry's substantial investment in commerce media infrastructure, which Omdia projects will exceed $300 billion by 2030, capturing approximately 20 percent of global advertising revenue. European retail media spending grew 22 percent in 2024, significantly outpacing the broader advertising market's 6.1 percent growth rate.

Lookalike audiences gain dedicated classification within the new structure. These algorithmically-generated segments identify users who share characteristics with existing customer bases or high-value audience segments. The methodology has become fundamental to audience expansion strategies across programmatic advertising platforms. IAB Tech Lab's ID-Less Solutions Guidance released on July 17, 2025, specifically addresses lookalike audiences as one of six critical advertising use cases in privacy-preserving environments.

Demographics, Affinity, and In-market categories extract previously bundled audience types into dedicated classifications. Demographics encompasses age, gender, parental status, and household income segments that advertisers layer onto campaigns for targeting refinement. Affinity audiences identify users based on sustained engagement patterns across Google's ecosystem, including search queries, website visits, YouTube consumption, and application usage. These audiences represent genuine interest patterns established over weeks or months rather than momentary browsing behavior.

In-market audiences target users demonstrating active purchase intent signals through research activities, product comparisons, and consideration behaviors. These segments historically deliver stronger conversion performance than broader affinity categories due to their proximity to purchase decisions. Google integrated affinity audience targeting with Netflix campaigns via Display & Video 360 on July 30, 2025, expanding targeting capabilities for streaming inventory.

The Custom category will classify advertiser-created audience segments built from first-party data, uploaded customer lists, website visitor retargeting pools, and bespoke combinations of multiple targeting parameters. Agency audiences likely represent segments created and managed by advertising agencies on behalf of multiple clients, maintaining separation between client-specific and agency-managed audience strategies.

An Unknown classification addresses scenarios where audience attribution cannot be determined or where segments combine multiple audience types in ways that prevent clear categorization. This category provides reporting completeness while acknowledging technical limitations in audience tracking across privacy-focused advertising environments.

Impact on campaign optimization

The expanded dimension structure enables performance analysis that was previously impossible within Display & Video 360's reporting framework. Advertisers can now compare how Commerce audiences perform against Lookalike segments for specific campaign objectives, or evaluate whether In-market audiences justify their typically higher acquisition costs compared to Affinity segments for particular product categories.

Campaign optimization workflows change substantially with ten-category classification. Marketing teams can identify which audience types consistently deliver superior performance for brand awareness objectives versus conversion-driven campaigns. This granularity supports budget reallocation decisions based on documented performance patterns rather than assumptions about audience quality.

The introduction follows Display & Video 360's broader privacy infrastructure investments. The platform introduced Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) on January 21, 2025, as a privacy-preserving solution for connecting advertiser and publisher first-party data. PAIR has achieved adoption as an industry standard through IAB Tech Lab, with over 20,000 publisher domains integrated through LiveRamp's Authenticated Traffic Solution.

Measurement precision becomes increasingly critical as programmatic advertising faces transparency challenges. According to the Association of National Advertisers Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Report, only 36 percent of post-transaction programmatic budgets reach valid, viewable, measurable, and non-fraudulent impressions. Detailed audience classification helps advertisers understand where their spending delivers genuine reach versus waste.

The expanded taxonomy aligns with Display & Video 360's AI-driven optimization capabilities. Optimized targeting, powered by Google AI, analyzes real-time campaign data to identify relevant audiences likely to convert. According to Google, advertisers using optimized targeting experienced a 25 percent boost in campaign objectives with Google audiences and a 54 percent boost with first-party audiences. Enhanced audience classification provides the optimization algorithms with more granular performance signals for decision-making.

Platform consolidation patterns

The audience expansion reflects competitive dynamics within programmatic advertising platforms. Amazon Marketing Cloud unveiled a code-free high-value audience builder in June 2024, enabling advertisers to identify customer segments based on purchasing behavior without SQL knowledge requirements. StackAdapt launched its Snowflake Native Apppowered by Snowflake Cortex AI on July 24, 2025, streamlining complex data preparation for programmatic campaigns.

Audience sophistication has accelerated across demand-side platforms as advertisers demand greater precision in targeting and measurement. Wunderkind launched identity-based audience targeting for Meta Ads Manager on October 29, 2025, synchronizing behavioral and engagement data from email and SMS channels with paid social campaigns. Beta clients reported 7 to 9 times return on ad spend lift during the first 30 days of implementation.

The distinction between audience types carries particular significance for privacy compliance and regulatory alignment. First-party audiences built from direct customer relationships face different regulatory considerations than third-party segments purchased from data providers. Commerce audiences derived from transaction data operate under distinct consent and processing requirements compared to behavioral targeting based on website browsing patterns.

Display & Video 360 has systematically removed legacy features incompatible with privacy-focused advertising. The platform deprecated Audience Profile Analysis effective July 1, 2024, which analyzed audience overlap using methods reliant on third-party cookie data. The removal reflected Google's broader shift toward solutions less dependent on traditional identifiers as cookie deprecation approaches.

Industry standardization efforts

The audience classification expansion occurs alongside broader industry efforts to standardize programmatic advertising infrastructure. IAB Tech Lab published comprehensive ID-Less Solutions Guidance on July 17, 2025, providing a technical framework for digital advertising without traditional identifiers. The 57-page specification outlines methods for targeting and measuring campaigns while protecting user privacy.

Commerce media standardization has progressed through multiple industry initiatives. IAB Europe released updated pan-European definitions for retail and commerce media on March 26, 2025, establishing consensus across National Federation and IAB network members throughout Europe. The comprehensive framework addresses on-site retail media, off-site retail media, and in-store digital retail media categories.

The timing positions Display & Video 360 for integration with emerging commerce media infrastructure. Criteo became Google's first onsite retail media partner through Search Ads 360 integration announced on September 10, 2025, enabling advertisers to create and optimize campaigns across Criteo's network of over 200 retailers directly within Google's platform.

Real-time bidding capabilities for retail media inventory continue expanding across programmatic platforms. Pentaleap and Teads announced on July 24, 2025, an industry-first integration enabling real-time bidding for retailers' onsite Sponsored Product Ads across multiple networks through unified platforms. The partnership addresses fragmentation challenges that have hindered retail media adoption by providing standardized access through existing demand-side platform relationships.

Payment networks have emerged as significant commerce media players. Mastercard launched its commerce media network on October 1, 2025, leveraging permissioned transaction data from more than 160 billion annual payments processed in 2024. The platform currently delivers up to 22 times return on ad spend for advertisers across retail, travel, entertainment, dining, and everyday spending categories.

The expanded audience classification supports Display & Video 360's position within Google Marketing Platform's integrated ecosystem. Campaign Manager 360 updated impression-counting methodology effective 2025, shifting from "on-download" to "begin-to-render" standards. This change ensures alignment with Media Rating Council requirements, supporting continued accreditation and ensuring impression data adheres to industry standards.

Strategic implications for marketers

Marketing teams will need to adjust reporting frameworks and performance benchmarks to accommodate the expanded audience taxonomy. Historical performance data based on three-category classification cannot be directly compared to future reporting using ten categories. This transition period requires documentation of methodology changes and establishment of new baseline performance metrics for each audience type.

Budget allocation models become more sophisticated with granular audience classification. Advertisers can develop audience-specific bidding strategies that reflect documented performance differences between Commerce and Lookalike segments, or adjust acquisition cost targets based on conversion patterns observed across Demographics versus In-market audiences.

The expansion enables competitive analysis approaches previously unavailable in Display & Video 360. Marketing teams can benchmark their audience mix against industry patterns, identifying whether their reliance on specific audience types aligns with or diverges from broader market practices. This intelligence supports strategic decisions about audience investment priorities.

Cross-platform measurement challenges persist despite improved classification. Audience definitions vary across programmatic platforms, preventing direct comparison between Display & Video 360's Commerce audiences and similar segments available through other demand-side platforms. Marketers operating multi-platform strategies must maintain platform-specific taxonomies while attempting to establish unified performance frameworks.

The announcement provides no timeline for when the expanded dimension will become available in reporting interfaces beyond the general "end of year" estimate. Advertisers should anticipate potential disruptions to automated reporting workflows that parse Audience List Type values, requiring updates to accommodate the seven additional categories before year-end implementation.

Timeline: Display & Video 360 audience developments

• September 18, 2025 – Google makes AI-powered Audience Personas available to all Display & Video 360 users, enabling natural language audience creation
• September 18, 2025 – Display & Video 360 launches targeting templates for creating reusable sets of targeting criteria across campaigns
• September 18, 2025 – DV360 introduces natural language search functionality for finding campaign entities
• July 31, 2025 – Google updates Display & Video 360 API with v4 targeting parity and YouTube inventory control settings
• July 30, 2025 – Google integrates affinity audiences with Netflix campaigns via DV360, expanding targeting for streaming inventory
• March 27, 2025 – Display & Video 360 API v4 moves to general availability, marking stable production-ready interface
• January 21, 2025 – DV360 introduces PAIR and AI tools for privacy-focused advertising and enhanced audience targeting
• July 1, 2024 – Display & Video 360 deprecates Audience Profile Analysis feature to align with cookie deprecation
• April 30, 2024 – Google unveils DV360 updates at NewFront 2024, including audience persona features for segment building
• By end of 2025 – Display & Video 360 audience list type dimension expands from three to ten values

Summary

Who: Google Marketing Platform announced the expansion affecting Display & Video 360 advertisers, marketing teams, and agencies using the platform for programmatic advertising campaigns.

What: The Audience List Type dimension in audience performance reporting will expand from three values (First party, Third party, Bid manager) to ten distinct values, adding Agency, Commerce, Demographics, Affinity, In-market, Custom, Lookalike, and Unknown categories.

When: The expansion is estimated to complete by the end of 2025, according to the announcement published in Display & Video 360's Help Center.

Where: The changes affect audience performance reporting within Display & Video 360, Google's enterprise programmatic advertising platform used by advertisers globally for campaign management across display, video, audio, and connected TV inventory.

Why: The expansion provides greater detail, improved accuracy, and future compatibility for new audience types such as Lookalike and Commerce audiences, enabling more refined analysis of audience segments and more informed optimization decisions as programmatic advertising infrastructure becomes increasingly sophisticated and privacy-focused measurement capabilities advance across the industry.