Availability Forecast Training Guide

Dart for Publishers

How to Use an

Availability Forecast

Presented by Gen-Y Media Inc.

What is Availability Forecast?

An integrated feature of DART for Publishers that helps you to manage your inventory by predicting how much inventory (how many impressions) will be available to a prospective ad.

What does it do?Availability Forecast (AF) answers the question:

“For a given set of targeting criteria, how many impressions are available?”

A Salesperson/Trafficker uses Availability Forecast to predict how much inventory might be available to a proposed sale.

Overview

• To run Availability Forecast, you must first set the delivery, audience, content, and creative criteria for an ad.

• These are the same procedures you perform to traffic an ad.

• You cannot run Availability Forecast on non-paying ads.

Summary of Process

1. Trafficker enters targeting criteria as if booking a real ad

2. Availability Forecast creates a hypothetical ad and tests inventory availability

3. Availability Forecast predicts how many impressions will be available for that prospective ad

How it works

Availability Forecast makes predictions by:

a) Looking at historical data

b) Examining ads that are currently booked in DFP (Availability Forecast considers how many impressions will be used by ads already booked. This includes ads currently running and those scheduled to run in the future).

c) Running a mock version of the prospective ad based on criteria for that prospective ad, simulating the ad serving process

During the Simulation…

The following questions are addressed during the simulation:

• How would the ad server behave?

• Which impressions would be served to which ads?

• After all the impression goals are met for booked ads, how many are left over for the prospective ad?

Limitations

• A.F. is not a crystal ball:

– Has a limited amount of historical data (goes back 7 days)

– Makes predictions based on what happened in the past

– No software can guarantee the future

Best Practice

• Run Availability Forecast for no less than a week

• Extremely short (a few days) or extremely long (several months) periods reduce the accuracy of A.F. results

Where to Access the Availability Forecast tool

A.F. can be run manually from two different locations within the Trafficking module:

TASK LOCATION

(i) to test a hypothetical adClick Availability Forecast in the Results tab beneath the Search tab

(ii)

To confirm availability for an ad that you are trafficking

Click Availability from tabs displayed beneath the Ad tab

Basic Procedure1. Access Availability Forecast for a hypothetical ad in the

Trafficking module

2. Specify delivery criteria• Start and End dates• Start and End times

3. Select Web Ad for Product Type

4. Specify targeting criteria, if necessary

5. Set the criteria for the creative• Ad slot size• Type of creative

6. Click “Show Results” to obtain A.F. results

Interpreting Availability Forecast Results

When you run an Availability Forecast, the following results display:

a) Targeting criteria

b) Overall results

c) A detailed breakdown

d) A list of contending ads

a) Targeting Criteria

• The header for the report displays the targeting criteria that was selected.

• In addition, the header includes information about the user, the ad network, and forecast period.

b) Overall Results• Overall results are shown for Matching,

Booked, and Available impressions

• These are the most important results:

• Availability Forecast subtracts Booked ads from Matching ads to arrive at Available ads

Description

• Matching: The number of overall impressions that will match the targeting criteria for the prospective ad during the period for which it is scheduled to run

• Booked: The number of overall matching impressions that will be booked by contending ads during the period for which the prospective ad is scheduled to run

• Available: The number of impressions that will be available to book for the prospective ad.

Available = Matching - Booked

c) Detailed Breakdown• The Forecast Breakdown panel displays results for individual criteria

that were targeted by the prospective ad

• For each value of each criterion, you can see how many impressions will be matching, booked, and available if the prospective ad targeted only that value for that criterion

• You can use the results here to help you adjust the targeting for a prospective ad.

• If the overall results show that there are not enough available impressions, check the Forecast Breakdown results to see if one of the targeted criteria is responsible (shows too few impressions available for the prospective ad).

• The results in the Forecast Breakdown are intended as guidelines only. Do not book ads based on these results

d) Contending Ads• The Contending Ads panel shows booked ads that

compete with your prospective ad. These ads match targeting criteria and overlap delivery dates with the prospective ad.

• A contending ad must:– Be booked in the same ad network – Use creatives of the same size – Overlap delivery dates with the prospective ad– Target at least one DART site or zone that the prospective ad

targets

• If the overall results show that there are not enough available impressions for your prospective ad, check the Contending Ads results to see which criteria of the booked ads compete with the prospective ad.

Saving

• You can print your results or save to file:

– Click Print Page to print results

– Click Save to File to save results to your hard drive.

Key Terms

• Contending Ad: A booked ad that matches the delivery and targeting criteria of a prospective ad

• Inventory: The total amount of ad space (impressions) on a site or network of sites

• Impression: One ad served to one ad slot on a web page

• Prospective Ad: a prospective ad is either a hypothetical ad that you are testing or an ad that you have just booked.

Key Terms

• Targeting: the process of specifying criteria so that an appropriate ad is served to a user

• Targeting criteria: aspects of the user or the ad slot that DFP uses to determine which ad to serve

• Trafficker: the person who creates, schedules, sets the properties, sets the targeting criteria, and uploads the creatives for ads.