DV360 vs Blindspot: a channel in the stack

The verdict: who each is for

Display and Video 360, usually shortened to DV360, is Google's enterprise demand-side platform: one interface for planning, buying and measuring display, video, connected TV, audio, native and digital out-of-home. Google's own documentation says out-of-home screens are reached by negotiating offline with a seller or by browsing out-of-home sellers on Marketplace, with automated execution and real-time bidding, through exchanges including Hivestack, Magnite, Place Exchange, Stroeer SSP, VIOOH and Vistar Media. Blindspot is the buy-side storefront: 3M+ digital screens in 50+ countries, one named screen for one named hour, priced per play from $0.23 and shown before you book.

This is the pairing where a versus framing is least honest, so it is worth saying plainly: most teams weighing these two should use both. DV360 is where a large advertiser runs a whole omnichannel plan, and out-of-home became one more channel in it in 2022. It reaches screens through exchanges, and several of those exchanges also sit underneath Blindspot's own supply. It is a layer, not a rival shopfront.

What DV360 does not do is let you name a board and set its hours. Google's documentation describes negotiating with a seller or browsing sellers on Marketplace, with automated execution and real-time bidding; the unit is the impression and the price is an outcome. Blindspot is the opposite shape: the screen is the thing you select, the hour is yours to set, and the per-play price is on the card before you commit. So the real question is not which platform wins, it is which of those two jobs you are doing today.

DV360 vs Blindspot, line by line

The dimensions that decide the choice, scoped to out-of-home rather than the whole platform. Blindspot figures are from live platform data, Q3 2026. DV360 is described from Google's own Display and Video 360 documentation.

Blindspot figures are from live platform data, Q3 2026. DV360's out-of-home buying routes, venue types and named exchange partners are from Google's own Display and Video 360 help documentation, read August 2026; out-of-home was added to DV360 in 2022 per contemporaneous trade coverage. Google publishes no out-of-home rate card, so that row describes the buying model rather than a quoted figure. Several of those exchanges also sit under Blindspot's supply, so see Blindspot vs Vistar and the wider platform comparison.

Pricing: the unit, worked

Neither platform publishes an out-of-home rate card, so this is a comparison of mechanisms. On DV360 an out-of-home buy is either negotiated directly with the seller or cleared by real-time bidding, and the effective cost is known once delivery has happened. Blindspot prices the screen itself: one play, one appearance on one named screen, from about $0.23 on urban screens, shown before you commit.

For an enterprise buyer this rarely matters, because a negotiated deal at that volume is its own kind of certainty and the reporting is what the plan runs on. It matters a great deal for anyone who has to put a defensible number in front of someone before the money is committed, which is most teams below enterprise scale and plenty above it.

A worked example. Say the brief is one commuter corridor for two weeks. Through DV360 you would reach that corridor by finding the seller on Marketplace or negotiating a deal, then let automated execution and bidding deliver against it, and read the cost afterwards. On Blindspot you select the corridor's screens by name, set 7am to 10am on one and 5pm to 8pm on another, and read the per-play price first: at about $0.23 a play, $500 buys on the order of 2,000 plays placed only in those windows. Both put your creative on the corridor. One does it as part of a plan spanning six channels; the other does it screen by screen and hour by hour.

If out-of-home is one line of a Google-centred omnichannel plan, DV360 is the natural home and nothing here argues otherwise. If the plan is places and times, per-play buying is, and skipping the hours nobody is out typically removes 30% or more of the waste at any budget. See the billboard cost guide.

Attribution: what you can measure

DV360's measurement advantage is coherence. Out-of-home is reported beside display, video, connected TV, audio and native in the same interface, on the same identifiers, which is what makes a genuine cross-channel plan legible to the people funding it. No single-channel marketplace produces that, and it would be silly to claim otherwise.

Blindspot starts from a receipt rather than a model: verified plays logged with a screen, a time and a place, then measured lift on top. Outcomes have been measured against a control group at around $0.82 per incremental store visit, $0.80 per incremental web visit and $5.75 per incremental online purchase. Set that against paid-social costs per action that often run from $15 to $40, and a well-scheduled digital out-of-home campaign competes on cost per outcome, not just on reach.

That loop is also what makes hourly buying pay off. Because Blindspot knows which plays ran and can tie delivery to foot-traffic and web lift, it can concentrate a budget into the windows that convert. A worldwide tourism campaign did exactly that, delivering 87% more plays than planned on the same budget, which is the clearest proof that this is an efficiency argument at any size rather than a small-budget one.

When to choose DV360

There are real briefs where DV360 is the right home and Blindspot is not. Choose DV360 when:

You already run the plan in the Google stack. If display, video, connected TV and audio are bought and measured in DV360, adding out-of-home there keeps one set of audiences, one frequency cap and one report. That coherence is the point of an enterprise DSP and Blindspot does not replicate it.

You are buying at enterprise scale on negotiated deals. Google's documentation describes negotiating offline with sellers as a first-class route. For a buyer with the volume to negotiate, that route plus automated execution is efficient in a way a card-price marketplace is not trying to be.

Out-of-home is a supporting channel, not the campaign. When the screens are there to reinforce a plan that lives elsewhere, per-screen precision is effort you do not need. Targeting a geography and letting delivery clear is the proportionate choice.

If your brief looks like any of those, DV360 is the right answer. And to repeat the honest point: these two are not substitutes for most teams. Running the omnichannel plan in a DSP and buying named screens in a marketplace is a normal, sensible combination.

When to choose Blindspot

Blindspot is the better tool when the screens are the campaign rather than a supporting line. Choose Blindspot when:

The brief names a place and a time. Blindspot sets a schedule for each screen down to the hour, so one board runs the morning commute and another the evening, and the empty overnight hours are simply never bought. Cutting those windows typically removes 30% or more of the waste and moves the same budget into the hours that carry your audience.

You need a price you can approve in advance. Every screen shows its per-play price before you book, from about $0.23, with a Times Square play near $40. Nothing is negotiated and nothing clears at a rate you learn later, which is the difference between a plan you can sign off and one you reconcile.

You do not have, or do not want, an enterprise seat. Open a free account and go live in about 48 hours with no sales call, no minimum and no platform fee. 25,000+ advertisers are already on it, and the same platform runs a single-corridor test and a multi-country flight, which is why this is an efficiency argument at any size.

You want the plays audited and tied to outcomes. Delivery is logged as verified plays with a screen, a time and a place, and measured lift has come in around $0.82 per store visit, $0.80 per web visit and $5.75 per online purchase against a control group, against paid-social costs per action that often run $15 to $40.

You can open the map, read real prices on a self-serve platform, set an hourly schedule per screen, and have Blinky build a plan from a one-line brief.