New Feature: Ad Traffic Instructions

Release date: June 2nd, 2023

A key benefit of media planning software is to deliver the ad creative files for the media insertions to your ops team or directly to the media vendor.

MediaPlanHQ always provided means to track what needed to be delivered and to send delivery emails.

But, it didn't allow to specify instructions on what ads to run when - especially when rotating multiple ads for a given media insertion, or re-using the same ads in different media insertions.

With this release, you can now define traffic instructions to schedule the ads to run for a media insertion.

Also, you can quickly identify traffic warnings to make sure you have ads on all run dates without overlaps.

Finally, you can generate a traffic instructions PDF that you can send to your media vendor.

Let's have a look at how it works...

Existing users: The traffic instructions feature is an opt-in feature - it must be activated.  You do not need to do anything if you don't deliver ads and don't wish to use the feature.

Activating traffic instructions

To define the traffic instructions on a media insertion and generate professional traffic instructions PDF document, you first need to activate the traffic instruction feature. 

Here are the steps:

• Step 1: Go to the Planning module.

• Step 2: Click the List view

• Step 3: Click the Eye button of a media insertion.  This will display the media insertion details view.

• Step 4: Click the Delivery tab in the right pane.

• Step 5: Toggle the Ad traffic instructions to Activated:

This will display the Ad traffic instructions section in the center pane:

Understanding traffic instructions

The Ad traffic instructions section allows scheduling the ads you want to run for each run date of the media insertion.

As you define traffic instructions, the system validates that all run dates have complete traffic instructions. 

It displays Not ready when the traffic instructions are incomplete with the corresponding warnings:

• Missing traffic instructions for the run dates:

• Missing/Invalid rotation for the run dates:

It displays Ready when the traffic instructions are complete: 

Defining traffic instructions

You can schedule multiple ads to cover the run dates of a media insertion.  You can also define multiple ads with rotation for the same run dates.

Here are the steps:

• Step 1: Click the "Add" button. This will display the Create traffic instructions form.

• Step 2: Input the Ad information.  

Code	A text representing the Ad code.  This is typically the ISCI code or the AdID for the ad. Note that you can click the Choose existing ad link to re-use an existing ad.
Creative link	The link used by the media supplier to download the creative file for the ad. Warning, when using an existing ad, changing the creative link will update ALL traffic instructions using the ad.
Start/End date	The start/end date for running the selected ad. Note that this start/end date does not need to be inline with the flight dates you defined for the media insertion.  (e.g. It can cover part of a flight line item, or cover multiple flight line items.
Rotation	The percentage of how often an ad should run relative to the other ads when multiple ads run on the same start/end date.

• Step 3: Click the Save button.

Generating a Traffic Instructions PDF document

When all your media insertions are ready with complete traffic instructions, you can generate a professional traffic instructions PDF document to send to your media supplier.

Note that you can view the traffic instructions from the Planning > List with the Traffic instructions column:

Since traffic instructions are tied to your insertion order, we recommend grouping the media insertions by IO number:

Now, you're ready to generate the traffic instructions PDF.

Here are the steps:

• Step 1: Select all the media insertions of a given IO number:

• Step 2: Click on the Traffic button in the bulk actions bar: 

This will generate the traffic instructions PDF document that you can send to your media supplier:

Note that the traffic instructions PDF document layout and content can be customized by our support team to fit your needs.

Auto-Activating traffic instructions by media category

You can configure a media category to auto-active traffic instructions when creating a new media insertion.  Here are the steps:

• Step 1: Go to the Media module.

• Step 2: Select a media category in the left pane.

• Step 3: Click on the Edit button. This will display the Update media category form.

• Step 4: Toggle the traffic instructions.

• Step 5: Click the Save button.

The next time you create a media insertion for a media of that media category, the traffic instructions will be automatically activated.  Note that this does not impact existing media insertions. 

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That's it ! We hope you'll enjoy the new ad traffic instructions feature. 

Give it a try and let us know what you think !

As always, don't hesitate to send us your great feedback or other ideas for new features !

Have a great day,

The MediaPlanHQ team