Table of Contents
Overview
The tactical details of a campaign—like selecting which placements to buy from which vendors—are defined and managed on the Schedule Grid, located on the Schedule tab.
The Schedule Grid is a spreadsheet-like interface that combines user-entered data with pre-defined reference data records and formulas, making it easy to build out a media buy and quickly calculate costs. When an Agency is ready to move forward, lines on the Schedule Grid can be committed.
Schedule Terms and Concepts
This section contains information about terms and concepts related to schedules in OneStrata.
Types of Schedule Grid Lines
The Schedule grid is a table of media and non-media buys, for a particular schedule option. There are five types of Schedule grid lines:
| Media Type | Schedule Grid Line Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Media | Placement | Represents an ad unit, with one format and one set of flight dates. |
| Media | Media Package | A collection of Placements, grouped by Supplier, with the same rate or cost per unit. |
| Media | Cost Package | A collection of Placements and Media Packages, grouped by Order Partner, with a fixed total cost. Each Placement or Media Package can have their own set of flight dates. |
| Non-Media | Entered Fee | A fee that is completely manually added to a media schedule, and has no pre-defined values. All values in the resulting Entered Fee cost line are filled in by the user, within the schedule. |
| Non-Media | Central Fee | A fee that is manually added to a media schedule, and has some pre-defined values. A pre-existing Central Fee record defines how some values in the resulting Central Fee cost line are calculated. Depending on additional settings, these values can or cannot be modified within the schedule. |
About Committing
In OneStrata, committing a schedule line is the process of indicating that a line on the media schedule is ready to move from a draft state to a "real" state with financial implications. Committing a schedule line makes it available throughout the rest of the OneStrata platform.
When schedule lines are committed on the Schedule grid, located on the Schedule tab, OneStrata automatically does the following:
- On the Schedule tab: Enables automatic flight period soft locking
- On the Orders tab: Groups committed lines with the same Order ID into orders on the Orders grid
- On the External Integrations tab: For Placement lines with a Technology Assignment value, creates one or more Ad Placement lines on the Ad Server grid
- On the Actualization tab: Creates one or more Order, Cost Package, Media Package, Placement, Fee, and Billing Period lines on the Actualization grid
About Schedule Options
A campaign can have multiple schedule drafts, in order to map out and consider different budgets and tactics during the planning process. These different options can be shared and reviewed with clients, and iterated on until a specific option is approved.
When one or more lines on a specific option are committed, that schedule option becomes Active and any other schedule options immediately become read-only Archived schedules. Moving forward, any changes to the campaign's media schedule can only be done on the Active schedule option, now just referred to as "the schedule". A campaign that has an active schedule cannot create new schedule draft options.
There are three schedule option types/statuses:
| Schedule Option Status | Description |
|---|---|
Draft | When a media campaign is first created, the campaign automatically has a single Draft schedule option. During the initial planning phase, draft schedule options can be freely created, deleted, and renamed within the media campaign. As soon as one or more lines on a specific draft are committed, any other Draft schedule options within the campaign become Archived schedules, and no new Draft schedule options can be created. See also: |
Active | An Active schedule has one or more committed lines, and any number of uncommitted lines. A media campaign has at most one Active schedule. |
Archived | During the initial planning phase, a media campaign may have multiple Draft schedule options. When a specific draft is chosen and moved forward, and one or more lines on that draft is committed, any other Draft schedule options become Archived schedules. Archived schedules are read-only and cannot be edited or deleted. |
About Flight Periods, Billing Periods, and Unit Calendar
Flight Periods
A media line on the Schedule Grid is divided into one or more flight periods, which defines how many units will be placed during the span of specified start and end dates. By default, flight period dates are bounded by calendar months, but individual flight period start dates and end dates can be changed as desired.
For example, a Placement line that runs from March 15th to May 5th is automatically divided into three flight periods:
- The first flight period runs from March 15th to March 31st
- The second flight period runs from April 1st to April 30th
- The third flight period runs from May 1st to May 22nd
That Placement line's budget is distributed among the flight periods in one of three ways:
- Pro Rata: Budget is distributed proportionately, according to the number of days in each flight period.
- Even: Budget is distributed evenly among flight periods, with each flight period receiving the same amount.
- Custom: The budget for each flight period is manually entered
The default cost distribution setting is defined at the campaign level. For more information, see Cost Distribution and Change a Campaign's Cost Distribution.
See also:
Billing Periods
Billing periods represent the committed financial details of a given month of service for a schedule line, and are used for client/vendor billing and actualization. Each billing period has a corresponding Billing Period line on the Actualization Grid.
Although billing periods correspond to calendar months, their exact start or end dates depend on the Flight Period(s) that occur within the billing period. For example, imagine a Placement line that has the following flight periods:
- Flight period 1: March 15th to March 31st
- Flight period 2: April 1st to April 30th
- Flight period 3: May 2nd to May 10th
- Flight period 4: May 15th to May 20th
- Flight period 5: May 20th to May 22nd
This Placement line has three billing periods, one for each month:
- Billing period 1 (March): March 15th to March 31st
- Billing period 2 (April): April 1st to April 30th
- Billing period 3 (May): May 2nd to May 22nd
Unit Calendar
The flight periods and billing periods of a Schedule grid line can be viewed and managed on the Unit Calendar. The Unit Calendar has two parts:
- The Unit Calendar column on the Schedule Grid: A visual representation of how many units are scheduled to run per flight period, grouped by calendar month.
- The Unit Calendar widget: Where flight-level adjustments are made, like changing the start or end date of a flight period or adding a new flight period.
To open the Unit Calendar widget for a specific Schedule grid line, double click the Unit Calendar column on the Schedule Grid, for the desired line. For more information, see Unit Calendar Widget Reference.