Use the Rebalancing Feature

Rebalancing

Guaranteed Campaigns

Rebalancing is the daily task that modifies campaign playouts (distribution). This functionality will speed up or slow down campaign delivery to address under/over performing campaigns to ensure that you deliver any "repetitions" or "impressions" promised to your client. We like to call that a self-healing process.

The Rebalancing feature checks periodically the progress of Live line items (campaigns) and adjusts their external saturation to achieve the expected impressions or repetitions at the end.

Benefits

The following are some of the benefits that Rebalancing brings:

• Attempts to deliver on target (maximize revenue)
• Make sure the right line items get optimized first (yield optimization)
• No manual re-shuffling, no more make-goods the next month (saves cost)

Overperforming/Underperforming Reasons

The following are the main reasons why campaigns are underperforming:

• Screens are offline
• Connectivity issues
• Failure to report performance
• Misconfiguration

The following are the main reasons why campaigns are overperforming:

• Misconfiguration
• Overplaying to fill spare time in loop (Important to have a non-guaranteed strategy)

Non-Guaranteed Strategy

It is important to have a non-guaranteed strategy. This strategy will allow you to fill spare time in a loop, if you have any. It will avoid campaigns to overplay to fill spare time, and thus will reduce overperformance issues from some campaigns.

Hows is Rebalancing Performed?

The system performs Rebalancing as follows:

• The system rebalances campaigns within the next 5 days while maintaining the original campaign end date. The initial goal remains unchanged until the campaign concludes. If the campaign is back on track after 5 days, it runs as planned.

OR

• For campaigns shorter than 5 days, the system rebalances the campaign until it ends.

During rebalancing, you cannot hold or book campaigns, or perform availability checks on the domain. To minimize disruptions for domain users, the system executes this process from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM local domain time.

Rebalancing uses the priority assessment criteria to determine which line items to rebalance first. For more details, see Rebalancing Priorities.

For more details on how Rebalancing affects each type of buy, see Types of Buy.

Rebalancing after Takeover is a proactive measure that recovers the impressions/repetitions of pushed line items.

To enable Rebalancing after Takeover, you must enable Rebalancing by selecting at least one Type of Buy for rebalancing (see Select Types of Buys). Rebalancing after Takeover will only be available for the selected Types of Buy.

When a takeover is booked:

• The system sets the external saturation of affected line items screens to 0 during the takeover period.
• The system rebalances affected line items to recover the impressions or repetitions of pushed line items caused by the takeover.

Note: The rebalancing after takeover window covers up to 3 days before the start date of the takeover, and up to 3 days after the end of the takeover.

After comparing target and actual impressions or repetitions for each line item, the Rebalancing feature assesses priority and importance based on specific criteria. These criteria also determine the rebalancing order for line items with equal priority.

The criteria for priority assessment are the following:

1. What is the priority level assigned to the line item?
• Priority levels are configurable in the Campaign Builder. For more details, see Assign a Priority Level.
• P1 has the highest priority, followed in order by P2, P3, P4, and so on.
• Tiebreaker: If line items have the same priority level, then the value of the line items is considered, as defined in step 2.
2. What is the value of the line item?
• Most expensive line items get a higher preference for Rebalancing. The higher the value of a line item, the higher its priority.
• Tiebreaker: If line items have the same value, then the end date and time of the line items is considered, as defined in step 3.
3. Does the line item end before or after the 5 days Rebalancing window?
• If two line items A and B have the same priority level and value, then the end date and time of the line item are considered to break the tie:
• If line item A has an end date and time within the next 5 days and line item B has an end date and time greater than 5 days, then line item A is prioritized over B.
• Tiebreaker: If both line items A and B have an end date and time within the next 5 days, then the screen count is considered to break the tie, as defined in step 4.
4. How many screens are selected within the line item?
• Line items with the fewest screens get the highest priority for Rebalancing.
• Tiebreaker: If the number of screens is the same, then the creation date of the line item is considered to break the tie, as defined in step 5.
5. When was the line item created?
• The older the line item, the higher the priority for Rebalancing.

You can select which types of buy will be rebalanced on your domain. When Rebalancing is enabled on the selected types of buy, it is triggered when line item performance is under the configured Rebalancing thresholds for the domain.

Tip: Broadsign recommends to enable Rebalancing for every type of buy.

Note: You can enable or disable types of buy even if the Rebalancing feature is not activated. In that case, this will only affect Rebalancing after Takeovers.

Note: Guaranteed Campaigns settings are available only to users assigned the Admin or Direct Sales Admin role. For more information, see User Permissions.

You can create the priority levels that will be used on line items.

Note: Guaranteed Campaigns settings are available only to users assigned the Admin or Direct Sales Admin role. For more information, see User Permissions.

The Rebalancing feature uses two thresholds to determine when Rebalancing is required, and how to modify a line item’s saturation so it is kept on track:

• One threshold for over-performing line items.

Over-performance is mostly due to a misconfiguration or overplaying to fill spare time in the loop.

• One threshold for under-performing line items.

Under-performance is mostly due to a misconfiguration or connectivity issues.

The thresholds yield to a different Rebalancing strategy.

The thresholds percentage determine thresholds under or over which Rebalancing is required. This means that any loss of Goal (impressions or repetition) under these thresholds (for example, 3%) is not considered for Rebalancing.

For example:

• The over-performing threshold is set to 60%.
• The under-performing threshold is set to 10%.

If a line item performance is at 80%, Guaranteed Campaigns will increase its saturation to achieve the desired goal.

When the performance of the line item is at 120%, Guaranteed Campaigns will not rebalance it since the over-performing threshold is set at 60%.

Note: Guaranteed Campaigns settings are available only to users assigned the Admin or Direct Sales Admin role. For more information, see User Permissions.

Once priority levels are available, line items in a campaign must be assigned a priority to determine which line items will be rebalanced first. This can be done in the Campaign Builder (see Create a Digital Line Item for more details).

Only the following users can set the priority of line items in the Campaign Builder:

• A user with the Admin or Direct Sales Admin role.
• The user who has created the campaign.
• The user who has been assigned ownership of the campaign.

To assign a priority level to a line item (campaign):

1. Access the Campaign Builder and apply a priority to the line item as described in Create a Digital Line Item.