Overview

The insertion forecast provides valuable insights into an insertion's inventory situation. You can use it for the following tasks:  

• Commitment validation: before an insertion starts, you can gain precise data to confirm that the goal volume committed to the advertiser is in fact available.
• Overbooking mitigation: throughout the insertion's lifetime, you can determine if its goal volume—or the goals of competing insertions—are at risk of not being achieved, due to overbooking. You can then use the forecast to test modifications of the insertion's parameters in order to mitigate the overbooking situation.   

The insertion forecast is limited to direct campaigns and insertions. It cannot be used for other monetization channels, such as RTB, or Mediation insertions. 

Delivery forecast

The Delivery forecast is displayed in the Delivery column in the campaign's insertion list and on the Delivery tab on the Forecast card in the insertion's edit view. 

The forecast data displayed is based on the insertion's parameters that are currently put online. Insertion parameters hat are saved but not put online are not taken into account by the Delivery forecast.

Delivery forecast in Delivery column

The Delivery column is available in the campaign's insertion list. Its progress bar is a powerful indicator of the current inventory situation of the given insertion. When you monitor your insertions with the insertion list, you can assess at a glance if the insertion will likely reach its goal volume or if underdelivery will occur due to overbooking.

Hold the pointer over the progress bar to see further details.

Delivery tab on Forecast card

The Delivery forecast is also displayed on the Delivery tab on the Forecast card in the insertion's edit view. It displays the same information as in the Delivery column in the campaign's insertion list.

Delivery KPIs 

The Delivery forecast provides the following delivery KPIs:

• Delivered: the volume delivered to date.
• Will be delivered: the volume that will be delivered, as calculated by the forecast.
• Will not be delivered: the volume that will not be delivered, as calculated by the forecast, due to overbooking.
• Remaining: the volume of an ended insertion that hasn't been delivered. 

Forecast status

The following forecast statuses are available: 

• Good: The insertion is on track to reach its goal.
• Overbooked: The insertion's inventory is overbooked. If the insertion continues delivery as it currently does, it won't reach its goal volume. Try adjusting the insertion's parameters. For example, broaden its targeting criteria and observe the Discovery tab to see if this mitigates the overbooking. For more information, see section “Discovery forecast” later in this document.     
• Goal completed: The insertion has ended and has reached its goal volume.
• Under-delivered: The insertion has ended but didn't reach its goal volume.
• No goal: The insertion has no goal volume to be reached: there isn't any value specified in the Volume field on the Delivery card of the insertion. For example, the priority levels Exclusive and Very low don't require any goal volume.
• Unknown: The forecast status of the insertion is unknown due to a limitation or another known issue.

Limitations

• If an insertion has a group volume shared with other insertions, the forecast calculation is based on the group volume. This even applies if the insertion has its own, individual goal volume, in addition to its shared group volume.
• The Delivery forecast supports only the event volumes Viewable impressions and Complete (completed video ads). A dash is displayed in the Delivery column in the campaign's insertions list if another event volume is used.
• The forecast period is limited to 90 days. Therefore, the Delivery forecast is unavailable if the period until the insertion's end date is greater than 90 days.

Discovery forecast

The Discovery forecast provides forecast data based on the criteria you are selecting in the insertion: the data is updated in real time as you add, remove or modify the parameters of the insertion.

Before an insertion starts, you can use the Discovery forecast to get real-time feedback on whether the goal volume is available for sale to the advertiser or agency.

Throughout the insertion's lifetime, its goal volume—or the goal volumes of competing insertions—might be at risk of not being achieved due to overbooking. You can use the Discovery forecast to test modifications of the insertion's parameters to see if they mitigate the overbooking situation. For example, if an overbooked insertion is targeting a specific state, you could test if targeting the entire country would result in sufficient available inventory.

The Discovery tab displays the following information:

• Forecast status
• Goal volume and available volume
• Available inventory
• Guaranteed inventory
• Forecast period 

Forecast status

The following Discovery forecast statuses are available: 

• Good: you have enough available inventory as the available volume is greater than the insertion's goal volume you intend to deliver.
• Overbooking: you don't have enough inventory because the inventory is already reserved by guaranteed insertions with equal or higher priority. Guaranteed insertions are insertions on the priority levels Exclusive, High, or Normal. 
• Not Guaranteed: the insertion is on the eCPM, Low or Very Low priority level. Volumes of insertions on these priority levels are not guaranteed and therefore not reserved. Assessing whether there is sufficient ("Good") or insufficient ("Overbooking") inventory does not apply for insertions on these priority levels.

Goal volume and available volume

The Goal volume is the volume you have entered in the Volume field on the Delivery card of the insertion. It is displayed in the color corresponding to the forecast status, as explained in the previous section. 

The Available volume is the volume that isn't occupied by the volumes of guaranteed insertions and is therefore considered free to be booked.

Available inventory

The available inventory is broken down as follows:

• Inventory where competing insertions on non-guaranteed priorities (eCPM, Low, Very low) are eligible to deliver: insertion volumes on non-guaranteed priorities are considered as available because these volumes are designed for cases where the publisher doesn't commit to deliver a specific volume of impressions. Also, programmatic monetization—open auctions or deals—can take priority over these non-guaranteed insertions, if the placements are being monetized through RTB. 
• Inventory with no bookings at all (No insertions volume): for this volume, there isn't any insertion created and eligible for delivery. For this inventory, the ad server returns a 1x1 transparent pixel in response to the ad requests. 

Guaranteed inventory 

The guaranteed inventory is the inventory that is already booked by competing insertions on a guaranteed priority level (Exclusive, High, and Normal priorities). Guaranteed priorities are designed for campaigns where the publisher commits to deliver a specific goal volume on behalf of the advertiser.

The yellow warning triangle next to the overall Guaranteed inventory indicates an overbooking situation: the insertion, as well as competing insertions, won't reach the impression volume.

The yellow triangle next to the Exclusive, High, or Normal priority levels indicates, on which priority levels underdelivery will occur due to overbooking.

Example

The following example shows the Discovery forecast for a High 2 insertion with a goal volume of 12 million impressions. From the Guaranteed inventory section, you can draw the following conclusions:

• The overall guaranteed inventory occupied by competing insertions is 2,998,669 impressions and some of the guaranteed insertions won't reach their goal volumes due to overbooking (yellow triangle).
• The volume occupied by competing Exclusive insertions is 452,385 impressions and these insertions will reach their goal volumes (no yellow triangle). They will reach their goal volumes because the insertion is on a lower level (High 2) and is therefore not in direct competition with Exclusive insertions.
• The volume occupied by High / Normal insertions is 1,006,293 / 1,539,991 impressions and these insertions won't reach their goal volumes: they are in direct competition with the High 2 insertion since they are on the same priority level (High insertions) or on a lower level (Normal insertions).

Forecast period 

The forecast period is the duration the forecast takes into account. It always starts today and is limited to a maximum of 90 days.

The forecast period is determined by the insertion end date:

• Insertion ends in 90 days or less from now: the forecast period extends from today until the insertion end date.
• Insertion ends in more than 90 days from now: The forecast period is capped at 90 days (from today) and doesn't include the remaining days of the insertion.