Google added Vertical Video Unification to Display & Video 360 on September 28. Advertisers can now buy and measure vertical video programmatically across channels from one platform. Marta Martinez, Managing Director of Google Marketing Platforms, wrote in the announcement that the product centralizes vertical video buys from publishers into a single workstream.
Google says Gemini powers buying, execution and full-funnel measurement, and that the setup avoids overexposing users to the same ads, a benefit it says siloed buying strategies cannot replicate. In initial testing, Unilever’s Hellmann’s and WPP Media saw a 24% increase in unique reach and a 25% drop in cost per unique user.
Why it matters
Vertical video is often bought placement by placement, with each buy managed on its own. That can leave the same person exposed to the same ad in several places and leave the media team with overlapping reach numbers. One workstream lets a single frequency setting and reach figure cover all of them. Unique reach is the number to watch.
The move fits a pattern we have been tracking. Buying platforms are absorbing the work that used to sit between tools, as covered in Agentic AI Enters Ad Buying, One Workflow at a Time, while the industry still lacks a shared vocabulary for it, as covered in Ad Tech Can’t Agree on One Language for AI Buyers.
The original insight
The 24% and 25% figures come from a single advertiser and agency test described in Google’s own announcement. They show that the mechanism works in one setting. How much a given advertiser gains depends on how much its vertical buys already overlap. A team spreading vertical spend across many publishers has the most duplicate exposure to remove, and a team concentrated on one or two placements has the least. Before moving budget, compare the reach each vertical buy reports on its own against a deduplicated figure. The gap between the two is the size of the opportunity.
Source: Google Marketing Platform
