How do I set-up a new flight?

After the campaign is created, you will want to set up a flight within that campaign to run content. When setting up a flight, you're specifying certain targeting information (date range, series, ad zones, impression goal, etc) to serve with a podcast or collection of podcasts. 

Warning: This article contains jargon specific to podcast advertising.

If you find yourself with questions about terminology please click on the within Dovetail or reference this Podcast Advertising Glossary for more information.

Step 1 - While in a campaign, click the Add Flight button toward the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Step 2 - Once the flight page has loaded, enter you flight's basic information.

Required: 

• • Name
    • Use a consistent naming convention so that you can have important flight information readily available, such as: AdvertiserName-startdate-enddate-#ofImpressions-zone
      • Example: GoodNewsDogTreats-OCT2024-DEC2024-40K-Pre

• • Actual Start & End Dates
    
    • These dates reflect when you'd like this particular flight to run. The Contract Start & End Dates will auto-fill respectively. Please note - actual start & end dates can be adjusted to extend or end flights at any time.

Optional:

• • Rate Type
    • CPM or Fee
  • Rate Value

Step 3 - Select the Series (aka Podcast) that you'd like the flight to run on.

Step 4 - Next, select + Add Zone and choose from the dropdown menu the zone(s) you'd like this flight to run in.

Step 5 - Select + Add Creative to add specific ad audio to the flight.

You can add a New (direct upload), Existing (pull from the creative library), or use a pre-generated Silent file. For the best results, all creative files should be in an mp3 codec and match the specs of the episode audio uploaded to Dovetail Podcasts.

If you are using multiple creatives:

You can adjust the weight for creatives to have them serve with the priority the contract calls for. The weight number can be used as a proportion or a percentage with the creative with the larger weight playing more often. Note: If the weights match between two creatives - the ads will serve 50/50. 

If you'd like to run two creatives as companion ads - learn how to do that here!

Step 6 - Set any necessary Target(s) and Advanced Settings.

For the Advanced Settings, check off any of the following if you'd like them to be enabled.

Allow serving with other flights in the campaign

Will allow you to run ads from the same campaign (ex: DogTreats Pre Ad 1 +DogTreats Pre Ad 2)

Allow serving with other flights from this same advertiser

If an advertiser has multiple campaigns, these can run together on the same download. (ex: DogTreats preroll campaign will run with DogTreats midroll campaign)

Step 8 - Next, take a deep restorative breath and then fill out the Impressions section of the right side of the flight form.

• Set the flight type. Capped Flight, Baked In or Remnant flight
• Set the flight priority.
  • 1 is the highest priority (‘first’), the higher the number, the lower the priority (25 would be 25th priority) - the system defaults to 10.
• Set your total and contract goals.
  • Please note that capped flights without a total goal will not deliver. 
• Set your flight velocity, daily minimum or maximum.
  • Most times you’ll want to Deliver Evenly but if you're on a tight deadline Deliver Fast will serve the ads quicker to reach your impression goal asap; something to keep in mind is that ads will not run back to back in the same episode - unless you have designated them as a companion ad. Daily minimum and maximums will dictate the how little or how much you'd like a particular ad to serve daily. 

Step 9 - Once you've verified all the settings are as you like them, hit the Calculate button, and the impression table will populate.

Orange lines in the allocation table reflect episode drop days - usually there are more impressions available directly after an episode drop, then decreasing over the run until the next episode drops.

The Available column is how many impressions are forecasted for the zone(s), minus any inventory that has already been spoken for by another flight or campaign.

The Allocated column shows how many impressions will be spread out over the length of the flight to reach the total goal.

By clicking on the double arrows on the far left of the week column, you’ll be able to see the daily allocations.

Toward the bottom of the impression table, you can also see any potentially blocking, competing flights  - which can be helpful if you're running into issues finding available inventory. Along with any advertisers that might also be appearing on the same downloads.

Step 10 - If everything looks good - set your flight status to the appropriate setting for your needs and then click Create or Update Flight to save changes.

Congrats - you've now got ads running on your podcast! If you'd like to confirm any particular ad placements, use our backsaw tool to see which ads are currently running.