Create a Flight

You can create a new direct or Programmatic Guaranteed flight in these ways:

Go to Ads > Flights then select + New flight
In a New campaign page, select Create campaign and… > Create flight.
In a saved campaign, select the Flights tab then + New flight.

In the New flight page, fill in Flight details. See Flight Details.
Enter Delivery details. See Delivery Details.
Optional: In Capping, add a frequency cap. See Capping.
In Targeting, specify publishers, listeners, and time. See Targeting.
Optional: Enter Additional information, such as External ID. See Additional Information.
Select Create flight. See Save a flight.
After you have saved the flight you can add creative. See Creative.

CPM and CPS Flights

You can create campaigns with impression-based (CPM) or spot-based (CPS) pricing. However, you cannot mix pricing models in the same campaign. All the flights in a campaign must have the same pricing model, either CPM or CPS, not both. For more information, see CPS (Spot-based) Flights.

You get more benefit and value from TAP when you use the CPM pricing model. Unless otherwise noted, the descriptions in this topic are for creating flights using CPM. Some of the features described are not available for flights using the CPS pricing model.

Flight Details

Campaign

Select the campaign to assign the flight to. A flight can only be assigned to one campaign.

If you arrived at the New flight page directly from a campaign, that campaign is selected by default. However, you have the option of selecting a different campaign from the ones that already exist in your organization.
Select Create a campaign to open the Create campaign for flight panel. After you select Create campaign you are returned to the Create flight page where you can continue to work on the flight.

Flight Name

Use a name that clearly identifies the flight so it is easy to find in your list of flights.

Each flight name must be unique in its campaign.
Optional: Select Copy name from campaign to use the campaign name as the flight name. You might have to edit the flight’s name to make it unique.

Flight Type

Choose either Direct Sold or Programmatic Guaranteed.

When creating a Programmatic Guaranteed flight, some of the flight’s options change. For more information, see Programmatic Guaranteed Flights.
If you are an inventory owner using Reach Extension, your only option is reselling. For more information, see Reach Extension Flights.

Delivery Details

Start Date, End Date, Start Time, End Time

You can specify when TAP begins and stops delivering the flight’s ads.

Enter Start date and End date to specify when to begin and stop delivering the flight’s creative.

Select Start date > Start today to quickly enter today's date. TAP will send the flight to the ad server in a few minutes.
The End date > Presets menu only appears after you enter Start date.
Select End date > Presets to quickly choose a date range such as Start + 7 days or End of start date month.
If either the flight or its campaign are saved as a draft, the flight will not actually start delivering until it is activated.
If the campaign already has one or more active or paused flights, the End of campaign preset uses the end-date from the flight that ends farthest in the future.

Enter Start time or End time for custom times to begin and end flight delivery.

Flight delivery begins at the Start time on the Start date.
Flight delivery ends at the End time on the End date.
By default, the flight starts at 00:00 on Start date and ends at 23:59 on End date.
These times are in the station’s timezone.

Priority Type and Priority Level

You can specify the order in which TAP considers flights for delivery with Priority type and Priority level.

TAP considers flights with higher priority before flights with lower priority. For details, see How Ad Selection Works.

Priority type organizes priorities into groups. Flights of the same priority type are considered for delivery in the same ad break or ad pod.
After choosing Priority type, you can choose Priority level. Priority level specifies the order of the delivery among other flights of the same priority type.
You can change Priority type up to one full day before the the flight’s Start date.
You cannot change a flight’s Priority type once the flight’s Delivery Status is Ready.
You can change Priority level at any time during the run of a flight.

Priority type	Description
Sponsorship	Highest priority type. Sponsorship ads play before any other ads are eligible. If you want your sponsorship flight to continue delivering after a daily goal is reached, select No Goal.
Standard	Ads play only after any eligible sponsorship ads have played. For typical direct sales ads, use Standard with a Priority Level of Normal.
Programmatic	The effect of this priority type depends on whether or not the flight has a goal: No Goal: the flight competes with programmatic flights based on price. Goal: the flight only competes with programmatic flights if its pacing is Even pacing and only after the daily goal is reached. This priority type has only one level, Normal.
Bulk	Generally used for remnant types of buys, where reaching an impression goal is not as important as the contracted CPM. CPM for bulk flights is usually lower than the regular rate card.
Filler	Lowest priority type. Only plays when nothing else is available. Used to prevent "dead air". For more information, see Filler. This priority type has only two levels, Normal and Low.

Examples:

A flight with type Bulk and High level is lower in overall priority than a flight with type Standard and Low level priority.
To play two sponsorship flights in the same ad break or ad pod, set their Priority type to Sponsorship. To make sure the first flight plays first, set its Priority Level to High and set the other flight’s Priority Level to Normal. When the ad break or ad pod runs, the first flight’s creative will play first, followed by the second sponsorship ad.

Pacing

Use Pacing to specify the rate at which Triton delivers impressions of the flight’s creative.

The Pacing method determines the rate at which TAP delivers a flight’s ads to meet the Goal within the Start date and End date. Pacing is not available when Goal is set to No goal.

Pacing	Description
Even pacing	Deliver impressions equally over the duration of a campaign. Advantage: Consistent impressions every day during the campaign. Drawback: Risk of under-delivery if listenership is low on the final day, like a weekend.
Front-loaded	Double the daily goal on the first day, then deliver the remainder of the total goal equally on the remaining days. Advantage: Boost at the beginning helps ensure you reach the total goal. Drawback: Risk of finishing early.
Trend-based	Uses the past 28 day's activity to adjust daily goals to more closely match listenership patterns. Advantage: Helps ensure you reach the total goal and distributes impressions over the duration of the flight. Drawback: Need at least 28 days of requests backlog to calculate the trend. Less consistent estimate of delivery numbers. Can give bad results for unstable trends.
As fast as possible	Like Front-loaded but does not stop delivering even when daily goals are exceeded. After exceeding the daily goal, the flight will only be selected if it does not put another flight at risk. Advantage: helps ensure you reach the total goal, including for a very large goal. Drawback: High risk of finishing early for high-listenership stations.

Expand to see pacing recommendations and tips

Recommendations

In most cases, Trend-based is the most useful pacing option. It is especially good for stations that typically get a traffic drop on weekends. Your organization administrator can customize the pacing settings to set this as the default pacing option.
Trend-based is recommended for CPS delivery because CPS delivery is tied to the listenership of the station. Trend-based delivers more impressions per spot in hours when there is a larger audience than it does when the audience is smaller.

Other Tips

Trend-based pacing can be very effective, but there are a few things to watch out for:
- Targeted stations or podcasts need to have at least 28 days of delivery history for the trend calculation (which is based on avails forecasting) to work properly. So do not use this option on new stations or podcasts until they have enough history to enable good forecasting.
- This option is recommended for flights of fairly short duration (e.g., one or two weeks), and when the trend is stable. For exceptions, see “For flights of very short duration,” below.
- This option is not recommended during times when the trend is not stable, such as within 28 days of a major event such as the Super Bowl or World Cup.
- Combining trend-based pacing with time targeting essentially disables the trend-based algorithm. The TAP UI will still show "Trend-based" as the selected pacing option, but the pacing within the defined time targeting window will behave as Even paced.
For flights that end on a weekend, when listenership tends to be lower, Trend-based or Front-loaded are usually the best options.
- Combining trend-based pacing with time targeting essentially disables the trend-based algorithm. The TAP UI will still show "Trend-based" as the selected pacing option, but the pacing within the defined time targeting window will behave as Even paced.
For flights of very short duration (1 or 2 days):
- If the flight ends on a weekend day, and your priority is reaching the total goal, Front-loaded is the best option.
- If the flight ends on a weekend day, and want to ensure you deliver over every day, Trend-based is the best option.
- If the flight does not include a weekend day, Even pacing is the best option.
When you select No goal, the pacing options disappear from the Flight page because pacing is irrelevant with "no goal" flights.
Your organization administrator can disable some pacing options, in which case they will not appear on the flight page.

Rate, Pricing Model, and Goal

You can set the rates, pricing model, and impression goal for your flight.

You cannot change a flight’s Net rate or Gross rate once the flight’s delivery status is Ready.

Net rate: Your rate after deducting commissions, and so on. If you're not sure of your net rate, use the same number as your gross rate.
Gross rate: The full ad rate before deductions.
Pricing model: Choose CPM (cost per thousand) for the standard pricing model. Choose CPS for cost per spot. For more information, see CPS (Spot-based) Flights.
Goal: The number of impressions that you want Triton to deliver for this flight. This is the total goal, which is divided into daily goals according to Pacing. Also see No Goal Flights.
Estimated value: Goal multiplied by Net rate. This updates when you change the rate or goal.

Content Type and Position

You can specify what kind of content to place your flight’s ads in. You can also specify where in the content that the ads should be placed. You can select any combination of Content type and Position. Impressions are distributed evenly across all selected methods.

You can specify what kind of content to deliver flights with Content type:

Live
Podcast
Other (On-demand)

You can choose where the flight will be delivered in the content with Position:

Pre-roll
Mid-roll
Post-roll

You cannot select Post-roll if the only selected content type is Live.

Delivery Verification

Select Open Measurement to include the <AdVerifications> element in Triton’s VAST response.

This applies only to Other (On-Demand) content. This option is only available if you have Open Measurement Interface Definition (OMID) enabled for the organization. For details, contact your Triton Digital Customer Success Manager.

Capping

Use Capping to limit how frequently a flight’s ads are delivered in different situations. For example, you can set frequency caps such as 1 impression per ad break or 2 impressions per download. For details, see Frequency Caps.

Targeting

Add one or more targeting rules for content, listener, or time. For details, see Targeting.

If the flight is not set to deliver to all content by default, you must target specific stations or podcasts. For details, see Content Targeting and Content Access.

Creative

You must save a flight before you can add creative. If the Add creative field is disabled, select Create flight at the bottom of the panel, then return to this section of the flight to add the creative. For more information, see Creative.

Additional Information

The flight can include an External ID.

Save a Flight

Once you have entered the relevant flight information, make a selection at the bottom of the page to save the flight.

Create flight: The flight is created and you remain on the flight page, where the Flight overview panel is now visible.
You can also select Create multiple flights to bulk-create up to ten flights. Bulk creating flights works exactly the same way as bulk creating campaigns.
Create flight and...
- Create another flight: The flight is created and a new, blank, Create flight page appears.
- Add creative by copying from another flight: The flight is created and a panel appears where you can choose another flightfrom the same advertiser, and use its creative.
- Add creative with custom VAST URL: The flight is created and the Custom VAST URL panel appears.
Create as draft: Select this to create the flight as a draft.

Draft flights do not reserve inventory. Only active and paused flights reserve inventory. Also, if the flight’s campaign is saved as a draft, the flight will not actually start delivering until it is activated.

If you see an error message similar to the one below when trying to save a flight, it usually means a change was made to the flight from someone else who also has access to it. Check to make sure your changes don't conflict with the changes made by the other person. To resolve, simply reload the page and try again.