The forecasting tool provides visibility into the available impressions across your email inventory. 

This tool supports your direct-sold campaign planning, helping you to see available and booked impressions at the media group, publisher, template, package, and even ad slot level. The forecasting tool also offers information around the composition of your impressions, showing impression attributes like Age and Gender. 

The steps below will guide you through the forecasting tool and its capabilities.

 

 

 

Getting Started

This tool is available to publisher clients. If you’re a first-time user, please reach out to your LiveIntent account team to request access to the forecasting tool for your account.

To start using the dashboard, please visit https://portal.liveintent.com and enter your login details. Once logged in, please navigate to the tool by clicking the navigation button in the top-right corner and select ‘Forecasting’.

 

Filters

Once in the forecasting tool, you have the option to view the impression availability for your email inventory. Use the filtering options to view available impressions for specific inventory within a set timeframe.

 

The filters below can be used by themselves or in conjunction with one another. For example, you can filter by specific ad slots only or combination of publishers and templates. 

Inventory Filters 

• Adjust for Apple MPP: Clicking ‘Yes’ will filter for Adjusted Impressions. Read more about Adjusted Metrics here. 
• Media Group: Select the media group you would like available impressions for
• Publisher: Select the publisher(s) you would like available impressions for 
• Template: Select the newsletter templates you would like available impressions for
• Ad Slot: Select the ad slots you would like available impressions for
• Packages: Select the package(s) you would like available impressions for 

User Filters 

• Geo: Select the US or non-US geo you would like available impressions for. By default, US geo filter is applied.
• Device: Select the device type(s) you would like available impressions for 
• State: Select the state(s) you would like available impressions for. Available only for US geo. 
• DMA: Select the Designated Market Areas (DMAs) you would like available impressions for. Available only for US geo. 

You can use the ‘Equals’ and ‘Not Equals’ toggles to include or exclude specific publishers, templates, or ad slots from your availability report. 

IMPORTANT: There is a limit to the amount of search results that can be returned, so we recommend always including the Media Group filter to narrow your search.  

 

Date

Select the desired date range for available impressions. You also have the ability to search by pre-defined date ranges such as “Next 7 Days,” “Next Month,” and “This Quarter.”

 

Please note that there is a six month window for available impressions. If you need available impressions beyond six months into the future, please contact your LiveIntent team. 

 

Forecast Adjustment 

Here you can adjust the percentage of available inventory based on any known scheduled bookings or reserved placements. For example, set 5% if you know 5% of your targeted inventory is reserved for an upcoming buy.

 

Availability Overview

After applying your inventory filters, the Availability Overview beneath the filter section will populate with the available impressions.

The ‘Overview’ section will show how many ‘Total’, ‘Available’, and ‘Booked’ impressions you have based on your applied inventory filters. 

• Total – All impressions for the inventory targeted. Total impressions equals a sum of Available and Booked impressions. 
• Available – Inventory impressions not committed to a campaign. This is an estimate based on historical impressions and no-ads observed in the last four weeks.  
• Booked – Inventory impressions committed to a guaranteed direct-sold or house campaign.

 

Impression Split

The ‘Impression Split’ table has four views available (Inventory, Age/Gender, Location, and Device Type) with the below columns:

• Media Group
• Publisher
• Template
• Ad Slot
• Packages
• Date: Indicates forecasted dates
• Available: Indicates available impressions
• Booked: Indicates volume of impressions booked by guaranteed campaigns
• Total: Indicates total impressions

 

Inventory

This view adds a column ‘Bid CPM’ to the set of columns above. The Inventory view details how many impressions are available for a specific CPM bracket. The available, booked, and total impressions are running totals by Bid CPM.

 

Age/Gender

This view adds two columns: ‘Age’ and ‘Gender’ to the set of columns above. The Age/Gender view details how many impressions are available for a specific demographic group. 

 

Location

This view adds a column ‘Location’ to the set of columns above. Location reflects combinations of country, state, and DMA. 

 

Device Type

This view adds a column ‘Device Type’ to the set of columns above. 

 

You have the option to download this section by clicking the ‘Download’ button in the right-hand corner. 

 

IMPORTANT: The Forecasting tool only shows inventory that had any impressions or no-ads in the last four weeks. The Impression split also omits slices of data that have less than 1000 total impressions. 

Impression Heat Map

The ‘Impression Heat Map’ section details how impressions breakout across ‘Age,’ ‘Gender,’ and ‘Device Type’ attributes via a heat map – the darker the color, the more impressions the attribute has. You can switch between ‘Total’, ‘Available,’ and ‘Booked’ impression counts using the toggle above the heat map. 

You have the option to download this section by clicking the ‘Download’ button in the right-hand corner. 

 

Competing Line Items

The ‘Competing Line Items’ section shows the booked line items that (1) fall within the date range selected in the inventory filters and (2) share at least one linked ad slot with the ad slots selected in the inventory filters. 

• For example, if the inventory filters contain Template A (which contains ad slots A, B, and C) the contestant line items in the report will include at least one of those ad slots. You can view the overlapping ad slots included in the line item by clicking on the ‘eye’ icon (see below). 

• Line Item: Includes line item name and ID
• Demand Type: Indicates the demand type for the line item (direct or house)
• Guaranteed: Indicates if the line item is guaranteed or non-guaranteed 
• Start Date: Date the line item will start to run
• End Date: Final date the line item will run
• Budget: Amount of budget set for this line item
• Budget Type: The type of budget set for this line item, either Impressions or Currency
• Price: Price for the line item
• Pricing Type: Price model for the line item
• Ad Slots: Number of ad slots linked to this line item directly or through packages
  • You can view the ad slots associated with the line item by clicking on the ‘eye’ icon.

You have the option to download this section by clicking the ‘Download’ button in the right-hand corner. 

 

IMPORTANT: The Forecasting tool only shows inventory that had any impressions or no-ads in the last four weeks. This limitation also applies to the Targeted Ad Slots: this list will only include the Ad Slots that have any historical data in the last four weeks.