What's happening on October 26
Google is auto-archiving all legacy maximum cost per view (mCPV) line items and Video reach 1.0 line items in DV360 on October 26, 2026. Every line item using these formats stops serving on that date. Both active and paused line items are affected.
There is no automated migration path. No bulk conversion tool. If a line item is still running mCPV on October 27, it will be archived and unavailable for reactivation in its current form.
With 37 days until the deadline, brands running YouTube through DV360 at any meaningful scale need to act before Q4 budgets and planning cycles absorb all available bandwidth.
Why paused line items are the real risk
Most discussion about this deadline focuses on active campaigns. That misses the harder problem.
Paused line items are where ad ops teams store years of institutional knowledge. Campaign structures built to match specific flights. Creative tests from 2024 that outperformed everything else that quarter. Seasonal line items paused in January waiting to be reactivated for Black Friday. Naming conventions that an entire team navigates by.
On October 26, all of it gets archived. You lose not just serving traffic but the structural reference material an account has accumulated over time.
Some teams will discover this mid-Q4 when they go to reactivate a holiday campaign and find nothing there. That is a preventable problem.
What replaces mCPV
Google is moving YouTube bidding in DV360 to two replacement formats.
Video reach 2.0 uses target CPV bidding rather than maximum CPV. Instead of capping what you pay per view, you set a target average and the system adjusts bids dynamically across your flight. The shift mirrors the transition from enhanced CPC to target CPA in Search — you trade a hard ceiling for algorithmic optimization. The first 7 to 10 days after migration involve calibration variance, so budget for that window and avoid reading early performance as final.
Video view line items (target CPV) consolidate skippable in-stream, in-feed video, and Shorts ads into a single line item. The legacy mCPV format only covered in-stream and in-feed; Shorts required separate treatment or wasn't available at all. For accounts already buying Shorts inventory, this is a genuine structural improvement.
How to identify your exposure
Pull a line item inventory report from your DV360 account filtered by bid strategy type. Any line item showing a maximum CPV bid strategy on a YouTube & partners format, or structured as a Video reach 1.0 line item, needs to be rebuilt before October 26.
If you work through an agency or trading desk, request this report now. It is a standard DV360 export that takes under 30 minutes to run. If whoever you ask has to research what you mean, that information is worth having before Q4 starts.
Once you have the list, rebuild each line item as Video view or Video reach 2.0. Creative assets, audience lists, targeting configurations, frequency caps, and brand safety settings all need to be re-entered manually. Build the new line items first, let them run for a few days to confirm delivery, then pause the legacy versions before the auto-archive fires.
The Q4 timing problem
October 26 lands squarely inside the window most DTC brands use for final Black Friday campaign setup. Finding a mandatory line item migration at the same time CPMs are rising and budgets are scaling is the kind of distraction that costs a week of performance while everyone debugs.
One more calendar note: the October 1 DV360 brand safety exclusion change — the removal of TARGETING_TYPE_DIGITAL_CONTENT_LABEL_EXCLUSION and TARGETING_TYPE_SENSITIVE_CATEGORY_EXCLUSION — is a separate migration with a separate deadline. Both are October events in DV360. Both are September action items.
If the mCPV audit confirms you have nothing to migrate, you're done in an hour. If you do have legacy line items, three weeks is enough time to rebuild and validate before the archive date. The window exists. Use it.
If you want to see where your DV360 setup stands before Q4, the free audit at gromerce.com/audit surfaces the configuration gaps that tend to get found at the worst possible time.
Legacy bidding formats don't announce when they take Q4 campaigns offline.
Sources: Google, ppc.land, Search Engine Land, September 2026
