There are several different pacing options for flights you create in TAP. The tips below should help you decide which pacing option is best for your flight.
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.