The Flight Type field in the Impressions section, helps determine how impressions will be delivered and how the flight's impressions will delivered against all other competing flights. There is a built in priority to each type, so the distinctions are important.
Baked-in
In the early days of podcasting, before dynamic ad insertion, producers would edit in the ads to the MP3 itself. Every listener would hear the ad. We feel there is still utility to simulate this experience using dynamic ad insertion.
Baked-In Flights will serve exclusively and in unlimited amounts on their days, taking all allocations away from all other flights. They have the highest priority in Dovetail's system.
Examples of when to use a baked-in flight: Sonic IDs, Billboards, High priority show announcements that need to be on every download, New Podcasts (when an accurate forecast may not be known), or instances when an advertiser buys every impression within a target.
Capped
With dynamic ad insertion, we can balance the priority at which most I/Os are delivered against one another. This is where Capped Flights come in.
Capped Flights will serve with other competing Capped Flights during their date range, according to their provided priority, until the total goal is reached. Any competing Baked-in flights will be served first before capped flights are considered. Any competing Remnant flights will be served after all capped flights have been served.
We consider Capped Flights to be the default type for typical I/O set up.
The Priority field is unique to Capped Flights. It allows Ad-Ops teams to balance priorities against each other. Dovetail will serve the lower-numbered priorities first. That is: 1 is the top priority.
Use the Daily Minimum and Velocity fields to signal to Dovetail the rate at which impressions should be delivered. By default Dovetail attempts to deliver impressions evenly (proportionally per day) across the given time range. If delivering fast, this flight will attempt to deliver as many impressions as available early in the date range.
Remnant
Remnant Flights are the lowest priority and will serve in equal proportions with other competing Remnant Flights during their date range. You can either set a total goal after which the flight will stop, or leave the field blank to serve an unlimited amount.
Any competing capped or baked-in flights will be served first before remnant flights are even considered. The allocations that will be served before this flight can be seen below in red.
We recommend using Remnant Flights along with VAST tags or in situations where you want something to fill an ad slot if no other ads are available.