What is forecasting in Ad Manager?
A forecast provides you with an estimation for the number of opportunities for serving ads available across your inventory, taking into account the targeting you are planning to run as well as accounting for other flights potentially also targeting your inventory during a period of time.
How do I run a forecast?
Navigate to the 'Inventory' tab on the navigation bar and select 'Forecasting' and 'New forecast'
This is an on-demand forecast and gives you a view into what is available - this will not create a campaign or affect your inventory.
After clicking 'New forecast' you can enter the following information:
Description: name the forecast as you like. This is just a label for you to describe what it is you are forecasting for.
Date Interval: choose the date range which you would like to understand your inventory across. We are able to forecast 12 weeks into the future.
Advertiser Categories: Include all of the IAB categories which relate to the advertiser which you are forecasting for. This is used to ensure that the forecast takes into account Ad Clashing, which prevents advertisers of the same IAB category from serving in the same ad break.
Ad Type: Ads or Sponsorship.
Position(s): Select one or more of Pre, Mid or Post positions.
Targeting Rules: apply the targeting which you would intend to apply to your creative. This helps us to provide you with the most accurate and appropriate forecast possible.
Understanding the results
Once your forecast is submitted, you will be presented with a result like the below.
Total Availability: This is the inventory which is available to you, matching your targeting criteria and date range and accounts for other advertisers who are booked in and are competing for the same inventory.
Total Inventory: This is the total inventory which matches to your targeting criteria and date range.
Please note: In some cases, especially when you are forecasting for Sponsorships, these numbers are likely to be almost identical. This is due to the fact that if you are selling on your own inventory and there are no other booked campaigns on your shows, there would be no competing campaigns, and therefore availability is closer to the Total Inventory.
How does the forecast get calculated?
Utilising historical data, we generate a set of records which detail what future listens, and by extension possibility of serving ads, will look like.
We are looking at how your show(s) have performed in terms of listens and ads served in the past, the number of ad slots activated and we simulate how this is likely to look into the future, taking into account other advertisers who have existing campaigns booked.
Forecast results are best effort estimations and are not a guarantee of delivery.
Additional Information about Ad Manager:
While we strive to provide value to all our clients, Ad Manager is currently only accessible to eligible partners. If you are a Creator Network Partner, you can inquire with your Partner Manager for further information. If you don’t have a Partner Manager at Acast, Ad Manager will not be available.