Google last month published a roadmap of upcoming changes to Display & Video 360 that spans nearly every layer of the platform - from how deals are created to how audiences are defined, from how reports are delivered to how brand safety is managed. The announcement, last updated May 22, 2026 on the Display & Video 360 Help Center, lists more than a dozen updates scheduled between March and August 2026. Several have already taken effect. Others arrive this month.

The breadth of the update log is striking. Changes touch policy, planning, deal workflow, reporting infrastructure, creative rotation logic, and audience targeting methodology. Taken together, they reflect a sustained effort to consolidate the platform's technical foundations while retiring controls that date back to the early programmatic era.

Policy changes: DOOH opens to alcohol and gambling

Two policy changes at the top of the roadmap, both estimated for April 27, 2026, expand what is permissible on digital out-of-home formats.

According to Google, alcohol advertising is now available on DOOH inventory through Display & Video 360. The change is not universal - promotion is limited to jurisdictions where the platform's existing alcohol policy permits it, and all ads must remain in compliance with that policy. The geographic constraint matters: alcohol advertising laws differ substantially across countries and even subnational regions, so the policy effectively operates as a permission set rather than a blanket unlock.

The second policy change concerns online gambling in Brazil specifically. According to Google, online gambling promotion has expanded to DOOH formats in that country. Eligible advertisers must hold the necessary certifications and maintain strict compliance with both local regulations and Google's gambling advertising policies. Brazil's regulated online gambling market, which formalized its licensing framework in late 2023 and fully implemented it through 2024 and 2025, created the legal conditions for this kind of platform-level policy expansion.

Both changes are narrow in scope - they open a format, not an advertiser category wholesale - but they signal continued expansion of programmatic reach into physical environments.

A change estimated for March 2026 alters what numbers appear when a media planner builds a campaign in Display & Video 360. According to Google, as part of a backend systems consolidation for planning and forecasting, several user interface elements will now show impressions volume instead of cookie-based audience reach.

Three specific areas are affected. The forecasted audience summary in campaign construction will switch from cookie-based audience data to impression data. The combined audience view in the audience tab will make the same switch. And the custom affinity audience builder's estimator will move from cookie reach to impression volume.

Google clarifies what the change does not affect: user reach forecasting on the Display & Video 360 planner itself remains unchanged, as does cookie reach in the Inventory Availability report.

The practical implication is a shift in the interpretive frame. Impression volume and cookie-based audience reach are not the same metric. Impressions count ad delivery events; cookie reach counts estimated unique users. As the industry moves away from cookie-dependent measurement, impression-based forecasting represents a structural adjustment in how the platform surfaces demand estimates during the campaign planning stage.

Campaign workflow: manual deal creation ends

One of the more operationally significant changes in the Q2 roadmap is the deprecation of manual non-Programmatic Guaranteed deal creation, estimated for April 2026. According to Google, the Deal Sync API is now the exclusive method for creating new deals. Existing manually created deals will continue to function, but no new ones can be created through the interface.

The Deal Sync API has been available as a deal integration path for some time. The March 2022 integration between Smart and DV360, covered by PPC Land, was an early example of how SSPs were already building automated deal pipelines into DV360 via API rather than manual negotiation interfaces. The deprecation of manual creation formalizes that direction as the only available path.

For media buying teams that have historically created non-PG deals directly in the platform, this requires workflow restructuring. The change does not affect Programmatic Guaranteed deals, which have their own creation mechanisms. But for private marketplace and preferred deal setup outside PG, the manual interface is going away.

Reporting updates: four changes across the summer

The roadmap lists four reporting changes, ranging from a cosmetic rename to a significant infrastructure migration.

Data provider rename

Estimated for June 2026, the Data Onboarder dimension value will be renamed from "AdAdvisor by Neustar" to "AdAdvisor by TransUnion." According to Google, this reflects Neustar's rebranding following its acquisition by TransUnion. The change is display-name only and carries no functional implications.

Floodlight and inventory reports move to instant reporting

A more substantial change, also estimated for June 2026, migrates Floodlight and Inventory Availability reports from legacy offline reporting to instant reporting. According to Google, the rollout begins in June 2026 with a phased approach initially affecting 10% of users.

This is part of a longer infrastructure consolidation. DV360's July 2024 updates introduced a new page in instant reporting for both DV360 and Campaign Manager 360, and the platform has been incrementally moving report types from the legacy system since then. The Q3 2025 reporting overhaul continued that pattern. The Floodlight and Inventory Availability migration follows the same trajectory.

According to Google, no action is required, but the platform encourages users to transition to instant reporting ahead of the broader rollout.

Connected TV app placement naming

Also estimated for June 2026, the Display & Video 360 YouTube Report will rename the Connected TV app placement designation from "Mobile App" to "TV App." According to Google, advertisers should review internal systems for dependencies on the old "Mobile App:" prefix, including hardcoded strings and regex patterns.

The rename corrects a labelling inconsistency that has existed since CTV inventory grew substantially as a distinct surface. Mobile App was the legacy designation because the underlying technical classification predated widespread CTV buying. TV App is a more accurate descriptor of the inventory type.

For teams with automated reporting pipelines that parse placement names to categorize CTV spend separately from mobile, this change requires an update to any string-matching logic that relies on the "Mobile App:" prefix.

Demographic dimension rename

Estimated for Q3 2026, Display & Video 360 will add insight into serving label-based reach reporting for age and gender by introducing two new metrics: "Age (Targeted)" and "Gender (Targeted)." According to Google, these will be based on information available at the time of ad serving and targeting. The existing Age and Gender metrics will be renamed "Age (Adjusted)" and "Gender (Adjusted)."

The distinction matters for measurement interpretation. Targeted metrics reflect what the campaign was set up to reach. Adjusted metrics reflect post-auction corrections applied to demographic data. Having both in the interface allows planners to compare intended demographic delivery against adjusted figures.

Other updates: brand safety, creative rotation, and audience expansion

Digital content labels deprecated in August

Estimated for August 2026, legacy digital content labels - excluding "Content not yet rated" - will be deprecated. Sensitive category exclusions for display, video, Connected TV, and audio line items will also be deprecated at the same time. According to Google, advanced brand safety controls are replacing them: specifically, inventory Modes and content themes.

This is the most structurally significant change in the roadmap for brand safety workflows. Digital content labels have been a foundational tool in DV360 brand safety management since the early years of the platform. PPC Land's overview of how Google brand safety works documented how Google classifies URLs using content labels across Campaign Manager 360, DV360, and Google Ads - a system that has underpinned exclusion logic for years.

The deprecation follows a pattern that DV360 began in September 2024, when it phased out digital content labels for YouTube campaigns specifically. August 2026 extends that removal to all line item types.

Google warns explicitly: failure to transition brand suitability workflows to the new controls will result in unrestricted serving. That is a hard operational deadline, not a soft recommendation.

Category exclusions replaced

Also estimated for August 2026, legacy category exclusions such as News and Politics will be deprecated at the advertiser level. According to Google, advertiser-level content themes now replace these exclusions. Before the August launch, advertisers will need to map current exclusions to new content themes and contextual solutions.

The combination of the content label deprecation and category exclusion removal in the same month represents a significant migration for brand safety operations teams. Both changes arrive simultaneously, and both require proactive workflow mapping before the deadline.

Creative rotation automated

Setting creative rotation settings for display and video line items will be deprecated, estimated for August 2026. According to Google, creative selection will now automatically match the line item's bidding goal.

The migration logic is specific. From August 12, 2026, any display and video line items with existing creative selection settings will be migrated automatically. After that date, the alignment rules are: Max conversions bidding will favor creatives expected to drive the most conversions; Max clicks will favor creatives expected to attract the most clicks; Fixed bidding, Maximize viewable impressions, Maximize custom value, and cost-based bidding will rotate creatives evenly.

For advertisers who have historically used fixed rotation as a creative testing mechanism independent of campaign bidding goals, this requires a methodological adjustment. Even rotation will only apply under specific bidding strategies. Under conversion- or click-maximizing goals, the system will pick creatives based on predicted performance rather than cycling through them at equal weight.

Audience expansion replaced by lookalike audiences

The most technically detailed change in the roadmap concerns audience expansion, estimated for June 15, 2026. According to Google, Display & Video 360 is replacing legacy audience expansion with lookalike audiences for YouTube Video reach and Video view campaigns.

Critically, existing settings will not migrate automatically. Starting June 15, 2026, advertisers must manually apply lookalike audiences to campaigns that previously relied on audience expansion.

The differences between the two tools are substantial. Audience expansion in its legacy form was capped at 1% scale - meaning the system could expand reach to users up to 1% beyond the seed audience. The new lookalike audiences offer three scale settings: Narrow at 2.5%, Balanced at 5%, and Broad at 10%. The scale ceiling has increased by a factor of ten at the broadest setting.

According to Google, lookalike audiences use advanced semantic similarity to find users who share characteristics with an advertiser's highest-value customers. The system applies automatic seed list exclusion by default, focusing expansion on finding new potential customers rather than reaching people already on the original list. Audience expansion did not carry this exclusion by default.

A further structural difference: lookalike audiences can be saved and applied to multiple campaigns. Audience expansion was a temporary expansion setting scoped to a single campaign. The saved-and-reusable model aligns with how DV360 introduced targeting templates in September 2025 - a pattern of making targeting configurations portable across campaigns rather than campaign-specific.

The history of similar-to-lookalike transitions in the platform is relevant context. Google removed similar audiences from DV360 and Google Ads in 2023, recommending optimized targeting as the replacement at the time. The introduction of lookalike audiences as a distinct, configurable product represents a more structured approach to audience expansion than either the deprecated similar audiences or the legacy audience expansion tool.

DV360's November 2025 audience reporting expansion added Lookalike as one of ten distinct audience list type categories in the reporting framework - an earlier signal that lookalike audiences were becoming a first-class product rather than an adjacent feature.

Why this matters for programmatic buyers

The Q2 2026 roadmap lands in a period of significant platform consolidation for DV360. The April 2026 updates adding reach overlap dimensions and instant inventory reports continued a multi-year reporting infrastructure modernisation. The Demand Gen API support announced for June 10, 2026 closed a programmatic gap in campaign management automation. The Q2 roadmap adds another layer of changes that will arrive in rapid succession - several of them in June and August 2026 with hard transition requirements.

The brand safety changes are the most time-sensitive. Both the digital content label deprecation and the category exclusion removal are scheduled for August 2026, with no automatic migration. Advertisers who rely on legacy exclusions for brand suitability will need to complete the mapping exercise to content themes and inventory Modes before that month. Missing the deadline means unrestricted serving - a material risk for any brand with active exclusion policies.

The audience expansion change on June 15 is the other near-term operational deadline. The lack of automatic migration means campaigns using legacy audience expansion will, unless manually updated, lose their reach expansion settings on that date.

For technical operations teams, the Deal Sync API requirement for non-PG deals and the Connected TV naming change in YouTube reports both require code-level updates in automated workflows. Neither is a large change in isolation. But in the context of a platform pushing multiple simultaneous infrastructure transitions, the cumulative maintenance burden across pipelines and reporting systems is significant.

Timeline

  • March 2026 (estimated) - DV360 begins showing impressions volume instead of cookie-based audience reach in forecasted audience summaries, combined audience views, and custom affinity audience estimators
  • April 27, 2026 (estimated) - Alcohol advertising becomes available on DOOH formats in eligible jurisdictions
  • April 27, 2026 (estimated) - Online gambling promotion in Brazil expands to DOOH formats
  • April 2026 (estimated) - Manual non-Programmatic Guaranteed deal creation deprecated; Deal Sync API becomes the exclusive method for new deals; DV360 adds reach overlap dimensions and instant inventory reports
  • May 5, 2026 - Google announces Partial Structured Data File Upload for Display & Video 360
  • May 22, 2026 - Q2 2026 roadmap page last updated on the Display & Video 360 Help Center
  • June 10, 2026 - DV360 API begins supporting Demand Gen resources for all partners
  • June 15, 2026 (estimated) - Legacy audience expansion deprecated; lookalike audiences replace it for YouTube Video reach and Video view campaigns; manual setup required
  • June 2026 (estimated) - Data Onboarder dimension renamed from "AdAdvisor by Neustar" to "AdAdvisor by TransUnion"
  • June 2026 (estimated) - Floodlight and Inventory Availability reports begin migration from legacy offline reporting to instant reporting; phased rollout starting at 10% of users
  • June 2026 (estimated) - Connected TV app placement renamed from "Mobile App" to "TV App" in DV360 YouTube Report
  • Q3 2026 (estimated) - "Age (Targeted)" and "Gender (Targeted)" metrics introduced; existing Age and Gender metrics renamed to "Age (Adjusted)" and "Gender (Adjusted)"
  • August 12, 2026 (estimated) - Display and video line items with existing creative rotation settings automatically migrated to bidding-aligned creative selection
  • August 2026 (estimated) - Legacy digital content labels deprecated (excluding "Content not yet rated"); sensitive category exclusions for display, video, CTV, and audio deprecated; inventory Modes and content themes take over
  • August 2026 (estimated) - Legacy advertiser-level category exclusions such as News and Politics deprecated; content themes replace them

Summary

Who: Google, operators of the Display & Video 360 programmatic advertising platform, affecting all advertisers, agencies, and media buyers using DV360 globally.

What: A roadmap of more than 12 platform changes spanning policy, planning, deal workflow, reporting infrastructure, creative rotation logic, and audience targeting methodology - published on the Display & Video 360 Help Center and covering updates estimated from March through August 2026.

When: The roadmap was last updated May 22, 2026. Individual changes are staggered across the quarter: several were estimated for March and April 2026, others for June 2026, with the largest group of deprecations targeting August 2026.

Where: All changes apply within Display & Video 360, Google's enterprise programmatic advertising platform. The DOOH policy changes are geographically scoped - alcohol by jurisdiction, gambling specifically to Brazil.

Why: The changes reflect a sustained effort to consolidate DV360's technical infrastructure, retire legacy controls built during the cookie-dependent era of programmatic advertising, and align the platform's audience tools, reporting systems, and brand safety mechanisms with more modern architectures. Several changes - particularly the audience expansion replacement and the brand safety deprecations - require active migration work from advertisers before the August 2026 deadlines.