DV360 and Search Ads 360 pricing for a Singapore buyer, and the one fee field Google's own API returns as zero

Both of these bills are documented in detail, and the detail is in Google's help centres rather than on the product pages a buyer lands on. The DV360 platform fee is a percentage of media cost with two different rates. App mediation inventory carries a published 18 per cent on top. Search Ads 360 is a percentage of eligible media spend, sometimes with a fixed monthly floor, invoiced on the first day of the following month. The one thing nobody publishes is your own percentage, because that is set in a contract. So the useful preparation is not hunting for a rate card; it is knowing every line that will appear on the invoice and asking for each one by name.

This page works through the structure of both bills: which lines exist, how each one is calculated, who invoices you for it, and where to read your own contracted rate once you have signed. That structure is the thing to take into a sales meeting, because it turns an open conversation into a short list of numbers to ask for.

Two things in that documentation are worth the whole page. Which of your two DV360 rates applies is decided by the kind of inventory you buy, so the media plan moves the fee and not only the spend. And the DV360 API, which hands back every other fee on the invoice, hands that platform fee back as zero. Google's own reference states that "the field will be 0 on read and an automated fee will be applied".

What the two product pages actually serve

Fetched on 29 October 2026, with the body read rather than the status code trusted, the two marketing pages are quieter than their reputation.

What the DV360 page does promise is control. It offers "end-to-end campaign management for enterprises in one tool" and says "see precisely how your money is being spent and know exactly where your ads are running". The Search Ads 360 page offers "up-to-the-minute data and Google's bid automation". Both are accurate descriptions of a platform and neither is a quote. The fee documentation is two clicks away in the help centres, and that is where the rest of this page comes from.

What a DV360 invoice is made of, line by line

Google's help page on fees and billable cost, read on 29 October 2026, states that "your total invoiced amount is calculated as the sum of several components" and then names them.

Three notes from the same page change how you read an invoice.

• The invoice format changed. Google states that "for increased transparency and detail, the single line item labeled 'Other Fees' has been split into Platform add-on fees and Third-Party Fees on invoices issued from October 2024 onward". An older invoice and a current one are not laid out the same way, which matters if you are comparing year on year.
• Your contracted rates are visible in the product. "The rates for using the Display & Video 360 platform are defined in the contract", and the page gives the path to read them: open the advertiser, select Partners, choose a partner, select Partner settings, then select Display & Video 360 Fee. If nobody at your company can say what rate you are paying, that is where it is written down.
• What you see is cost, not what an agency charges you. Google states that "Display & Video 360 will always reflect actual costs, not revenue", that actual costs are media cost plus platform fees plus platform add-on fees plus third-party fees, and that revenue "is determined by a markup functionality within the partner costs" which lets agencies and partners "enter custom CPM or media fees". Those marked-up figures "only appear in reporting and will not show up on your invoice". If you buy DV360 through an agency, that sentence is the one to read twice.

The two rates, and the add-on that is a published percentage

Google's page on the Display and Video 360 Fee screen, read 29 October 2026, is the only place in this subject where a fee percentage is printed at all. It states that "Display & Video 360 Fee Tier info displays the current contract rates applied to your account" and that "these rates consist of an 'Upper' and 'Lower' rate", which "refer to the auction process used to purchase media space".

So the platform fee on the same budget changes with how you buy. Two media plans at an identical media cost, one built on open auction inventory and one built on YouTube and programmatic guaranteed deals, carry different platform fees, and the second one carries the lower of your two contracted rates. That is a planning lever most buyers never hear about, because they are quoted one number and assume it is the number.

The one hard percentage Google prints here is an add-on. The same page states that "line items buying impressions on app mediation partners will incur an 18% fee in addition to the platform fees". Note the wording: in addition to, not instead of. In-app inventory bought through mediation partners therefore carries the platform fee and 18 per cent on top.

Both figures in your own contract are filled in automatically on that screen, which Google says is "automatically filled out based on your contract". The page names a Fee Tier section; it does not publish the tiers themselves, and neither will this page.

The country surcharges, and the Singapore line that is not there

Google's page on country-specific fees in Display and Video 360, read 29 October 2026, carries the single most important sentence on this subject for a Singapore advertiser. The surcharges "apply when an ad is served in these countries or associated regions, not where your actual business is located".

Put those two facts together and the Singapore position is precise. A Singapore advertiser serving Singapore impressions picks up no country surcharge, because there is no Singapore line. A Singapore advertiser serving impressions into the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Italy, Spain or Turkey pays that country's surcharge on the media cost of those impressions, because the charge follows the audience rather than the office. Google gives its own worked example: "if you advertise in Germany, Austria, and Poland, surcharges will only be applied to ads served in Austria".

Tax sits on top of all of it. The same page states that "any taxes, such as sales tax, VAT, GST, or QST that apply in your country will be charged in addition to the new surcharges", so a Singapore GST question is separate from the surcharge question and is answered on your own invoice. For how a foreign software invoice reaches a Singapore buyer, see our page on what SEO tools really cost a Singapore buyer.

What the API adds, and the one field that reads zero

The Display and Video 360 API reference for the PartnerCost resource, version 4, read on 29 October 2026, describes the same bill from the inside. It states that "a partner cost is any type of expense involved in running a campaign, other than the costs of purchasing impressions (which is called the media cost) and using third-party audience segment data (data fee)", and gives three settings on every such cost.

That last column surprises finance teams. Some of what you buy inside DV360 arrives on the Google invoice and some arrives separately from the vendor, and which is which is a property of the service rather than a negotiation.

Then the sentence this page is named after. The fee value fields are "applicable when the cost_type is not PARTNER_COST_TYPE_DV360_FEE", and "for PARTNER_COST_TYPE_DV360_FEE the field will be 0 on read and an automated fee will be applied".

That is consistent with everything above rather than in conflict with it. The platform fee is contractual, Google applies it automatically, and so the API has no number to hand back and returns zero. Three practical readings follow.

• A reconciliation script that pulls partner costs and sums the fee values reports your platform fee as zero every time, and the total comes out short by the one line nobody can read programmatically.
• The place that fee is written down is the contract, and the place to read it in the product is the Display and Video 360 Fee screen described above. Ask for the Upper and Lower rates by name, in writing, before you ask about anything else.
• Every other fee in the structure is readable and auditable, which makes the contrast useful rather than sinister. Build your reconciliation from the invoice, and use reporting for everything except the platform fee.

Two notes on versions, because they matter. The v3 reference carries a banner reading "Display and Video 360 API v3 has sunset, and users should use v4 instead". The wording quoted here was read on the v4 page, where the same sentence appears and no sunset notice does, and v4's own summary describes the available fee types as "a fixed CPM fee or a percentage surcharge based on media cost".

The currency line to settle first

Google's reference denominates a CPM fee "in micros of advertiser's currency" and gives the worked example that "for 1.5 standard unit of the advertiser's currency, set this field to 1500000".

Read that as an instruction. The fee is expressed in whatever currency the advertiser object was created in, not in the currency of the market you are buying. So settle three things before a proposal is approved. Which currency the advertiser is set to. Whether your invoice arrives in that same currency. And whether any figure in the proposal has been converted from another currency to get there, because a converted figure depends on a rate nobody can check again later. Ask for the number in the currency you will be billed in and leave the conversion out of the document.

What Search Ads 360 charges, in its own help centre

Search Ads 360 is documented more plainly than DV360, and the mechanics are worth knowing before a first meeting. All of the following is from Google's Search Ads 360 help pages on fees and on billing, read in their Singapore editions on 29 October 2026.

The fee is a percentage of eligible spend, not of everything you spend. Google states that "the Search Ads 360 fee covers the cost of using the platform and is calculated as a percentage of your total eligible ad spend (media spend)", and that "you can find the specific percentage for this fee under the 'Rate' column on your invoice". Its billing FAQ names the eligible types: "your bill is a percentage of your ad spend on eligible campaigns, like Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen, based on the rates outlined in your contract". So spend that runs through campaign types outside that list is not in the fee base, and the FAQ's own reconciliation advice starts with "identifying which campaign types are billable".

There may be a floor, and Google prints the arithmetic. Some contracts carry a minimum service fee, "a fixed minimum amount you agree to pay monthly or annually, regardless of your ad spend", and if the calculated fee falls below it "the difference (or total amount, in the case of monthly minimums) will appear on your invoice as the minimum service fee". The worked example on Google's own page runs as follows.

That is the figure to work out before anything else, because it sets the point below which the platform costs the same whatever you do. At a 1,500 dollar monthly minimum, an account spending little enough that its percentage fee lands under that number is paying for capacity it is not using.

The invoicing details that catch people out. Google states that "your invoices are issued on a monthly basis on the first day of the following month, reflecting the previous month's usage". If no invoice arrives, its FAQ gives the reason: "it's likely that your usage didn't meet the minimum billing threshold for that month. In that case, no invoice is generated." Past months can also reappear on a current invoice, because "'Fee Adjustment' entries reflect our rolling invoicing process", where "final usage data from supported account types may take time to become available and some activity might be identified as invalid, such as spam clicks or impressions". And billing changes are blocked at the turn of the month, through "month-end lockdowns and the invoicing cycle, which typically prevent billing changes during the end of the month and the first few days of the following month".

How you pay. "Payments can only be made via wire transfer, cheque or bank transfer. Invoices can't be paid by credit card." For a Singapore company that means a supplier record, a payment run and a finance approval rather than a card on file, so build the lead time into the launch date.

Search Ads 360 is a platform licence and not Google search ad pricing

These two questions get typed the same way and they have completely different answers.

If the question is what a Google search click costs, that is the Google Ads auction, and there is no rate card for Singapore because the figure is produced per search. The Singapore dollar click sets that three local suppliers publish, and why they disagree, are in our page on what a Google Ads click costs in Singapore.

If the question is what Search Ads 360 costs, it is a percentage of eligible media spend, possibly with a monthly floor, invoiced on the first of the following month, at a rate in your contract. The media you buy through it is still the same auction, so a Search Ads 360 decision never changes the price of a click. A buyer who conflates the two ends up paying a management layer to solve an auction problem.

How much Singapore searches for this

Google Keyword Planner, queried for Singapore as geo 2702 and read for this plan on 26 October 2026, puts the group containing "dv360 cost", "dv360 pricing", "dv360 fee", "dv360 media cost" and "media cost dv360" at 10 searches a month, and the group containing "google search ads 360 pricing" at 10 searches a month. Each figure is the maximum across its whole group of phrasings rather than the sum, and 10 a month is the floor Keyword Planner reports for Singapore.

That is the right size for this subject. Few organisations in one city buy an enterprise demand side platform, and the ones that do are spending enough that the structure above is worth an hour of somebody's time. One phrasing on the plan, "google search ads pricing", is deliberately not covered here, because the click price question already has a Singapore page of its own and two pages chasing one question help nobody.

The nine answers that turn a sales conversation into a number

• Both DV360 rates, by name. The Upper (Exchange) rate and the Lower (Non-Exchange) rate, in writing, with the inventory each one applies to.
• Whether your plan sits on the upper or the lower rate. A plan weighted to YouTube and programmatic guaranteed carries the lower rate; one weighted to open auction carries the upper.
• App mediation, in or out. Google publishes 18 per cent on top of the platform fee for line items buying on app mediation partners, so that is a yes or no decision with a printed price.
• Which costs are billed through DV360 and which by the partner. Google's reference marks every service one way or the other; ask for your proposal to be marked the same way.
• Data fees and verification, as their own lines. Third-party audience data and verification are separate components in Google's own invoice structure.
• Markup, declared. If an agency holds the partner, ask whether any custom CPM or media fee is applied in partner costs, because Google says those appear in reporting and not on the invoice.
• The Search Ads 360 rate and the minimum service fee. Both, with the eligible campaign types the percentage applies to.
• Which markets you will serve. Surcharges follow the audience, so a Singapore account serving the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Italy, Spain or Turkey should budget that country's percentage on the media cost of those impressions.
• The advertiser currency, and who holds the hierarchy. Set the currency before the first insertion order, and settle who holds the partner and advertiser accounts, because that is who holds your data and your history.

If the route you are actually comparing is an agency seat rather than your own contract, the models that sit around one are set out in our page on what a B2B programmatic agency runs on, and the fee models for day to day paid search management in this market are in what PPC management costs in Singapore.

Questions a Singapore buyer asks about DV360 and Search Ads 360 fees

Does Google publish a DV360 price anywhere

It publishes the structure and not the rate. The product page carries 993 visible words, no currency symbol and no occurrence of the words price, pricing, cost or fee, read 29 October 2026. The help centre then documents the invoice components, states that the platform fee is "calculated as a percentage of the Media Cost", names the Upper and Lower rates, publishes 18 per cent for app mediation partners, and says the rates themselves "are defined in the contract".

Why does my DV360 platform fee show as zero in the API

Because it is applied automatically rather than configured. Google's reference states that for the DV360 fee type "the field will be 0 on read and an automated fee will be applied". Read the fee off the invoice and the contracted rates off the Display and Video 360 Fee screen in Partner settings.

Does a Singapore advertiser pay a country surcharge

Not for serving in Singapore, because Singapore appears on no line of Google's country-specific fees page. You pick up another country's surcharge when you serve impressions there, because Google states the charge applies where the ad is served "not where your actual business is located". Singapore GST, if it applies to your invoice, is charged in addition to any surcharge.

What is the minimum to run Search Ads 360

Google does not publish one, and it publishes the mechanism that acts like one. Some contracts carry a minimum service fee, a fixed monthly or annual amount payable regardless of ad spend, and Google's own example uses 1,500 US dollars a month with a 900 dollar calculated fee and a 600 dollar top up. Ask for your minimum and your rate together, because one without the other does not price anything.

Why did no Search Ads 360 invoice arrive last month

Google's billing FAQ answers this directly. If usage did not meet the minimum billing threshold for that month, no invoice is generated. Invoices otherwise arrive on the first day of the following month for the previous month's usage.

Will either platform lower my media cost

Neither changes the auction. Media cost is its own line in Google's invoice structure, with the platform fee calculated on top of it as a percentage, so the honest way to judge either platform is on the work it removes from a team's week and the decisions better reporting lets you make. What a buyer can genuinely optimise on price is the inventory mix, because the Upper and Lower rates are not the same number.

The buying seat nobody licenses

Everything above is a way of buying impressions through a contract, with a fee on top, a surcharge where you serve, and an invoice to reconcile on the first of the month. There is one route to a Singapore buyer with no seat, no insertion order and no rate column, which is the shortlist an assistant reads out when somebody asks it which supplier or which product to use. Nobody bids into that and nobody is invoiced for it, and the businesses it names are the ones whose pages the engines can read and trust. AI Knows Us measures which names come back on a given question and what the answer was built from, which is a different kind of number from anything on a DV360 statement. For the platform landscape around the seat itself, our page on programmatic advertising platforms and the buying seats sets out who sells what.