Create Digital Media Products for Impression Sales
Digital Media Impression items require you to have a Digital Media Publication, Ad Sizes, and Category set up for Impression inventory. You can also set up placements and channels to provide more targeted sales options for customers. While Digital Media Products have one default price, you can set up pricing for each publication and channel. So one product can have multiple price points and targeting options.
There are two items you need to have set up before you will be able to create Impression Products: set up a publication to use digital media and set up a product category to use the Impression Product inventory type. You will only need to set these up once, however you may wish to review them from time to time or add new publications for digital media or have multiple Impression Product categories, depending on how you want your system configured.
You must have at least one Publication set up for Digital Media. When adding or editing a Publication, the field ‘Use for Digital Media,’ must be set to Yes. Once this is set up, you will need to add the Sizes, Placements, and Channels you want to be able to use for your Digital Media items sold on that Publication. Review your Publication settings by going to Settings > Products > Publication & Issue Setup.
There must be at least one Product Category set up to use the Reserved Product inventory type. Go to Settings > Products > Product Categories and add a new category. Name the category and set the inventory type to Impression Product. The system will automatically allow the category on orders, but you can choose whether to display it in the client center, and whether it is only editable by admin.
Note
Once a Product Category is created, the inventory type cannot be edited.
Important
If you are planning to sync your Digital Media items to Google Ad Manager, you will need to sync your placements and targeting presets before setting up your products. Go to the Syncing Digital Media Products to your Google Ad Manager Accounts document to go over how to sync your products.
Now that you have a Publication set up for Digital Media, and a Product Category set up to use the Impression Product inventory type, you can begin creating your Impression Products. Navigate to Settings > Products > Impression Products.
To access this page, you must have the User Permission ‘Slot, Impression, Reserved & Targeted Display Products.’
Click ‘Add Impression Product.’ On the add/edit product page, you can begin entering information for your product.
Add your product name and choose the category. The product name will display on the contract to your customer and in reports.
Add your rate. The rate is based on units of 1000. For example, set your rate to 20 if 1000 impressions cost $20/1000 or $.02/1.
You must have at least one active publication for each product, but you can have multiple publications. You may want to have multiple publications if you sell a ROS across multiple sites that share the same rate and details. A user will have to select a publication when putting the product on an order.
The placement field will load once you have selected your publication(s). Placements will only show up if they are shared between publications. A User won't select a placement when placing an order; it is for internal production purposes. Placements are required if using GAM.
The channel field works the same as the placements. You can only select a channel if it is shared between publications. A user can select a channel on the order page, but it is not a required field. Use the channel to better target your ad sales for your customers. Channels will map to your GAM targeting presets.
The ad size file works the same was as the placement and channel field. A user can't select the ad sizes on the order page. When the digital media ticket is created, it will list every ad sizes associated with the product. When assets are uploaded to the ticket, your production user can assign assets to the correct size and include the target URL or phone number.
Note
If you have the internal configuration ‘Add placements, channels, and sizes directly to digital media products’ enabled, you will be able to select any placement, channel, or size to add to your digital media product, regardless of the publications selected. In this case, these items would get automatically added to your publication, if added to a product that uses the publication. You need to contact support to turn this configuration on or off.
Add a description to list all the details about the ad to your customer. The description will show up on the contract for the customer.
You may see a Default GL Class field if you have a Media GL Class enabled. The field will use the GL Class but you can override it on the order form.
Since impression items are broken up by month, you can use the Revenue Recognition field to determine where the money for the item goes. By default, this field is set to ‘Distribution Across All Months’, which means the quantity and gross and net amounts for the item will be split up evenly across each month the item spans. If you change the field to ‘Front-Load First Month’, the quantity, gross, and net amount of the item will all be put into the first month the item is running, and the rest of the months will be set to 0. If you use this option, your tickets will be grouped automatically.
Inventory
If you wish to have inventory management for your impression product, you should continue on to the Baseline and Monthly Inventory sections of the product setup page. If you leave these fields blank, there will be unlimited inventory for the product. This section is only applicable for impression products that are not set up to use GAM’s inventory. If an item is synced with GAM, and is set up to use GAM inventory, these fields will be hidden.
Baseline Inventory
Baseline Inventory is set up based on the channels and publications on the product. For instance, if you have two channels and two publications on your impression product, you’ll see two columns (one for each pub), and three rows (one for each channel, and one row for ‘no channel’).
Enter the quantities you wish to sell for each publication and channel for your product.
The Baseline Inventory will apply to every month. For example, if you set a 50,000 in one of your options, you can only sell 50,000 units of the product every month for that channel and publication.
Monthly Inventory
If you wish to override the Baseline Inventory for a specific month, use the Monthly Inventory option. The setup of Monthly Inventory is the same, with publications as your columns and channels as your rows. The difference is that you can scroll between months, or use the calendar to jump to a specific month.
You’ll notice that each month of the Monthly Inventory by default will be the same as whatever is set in your Baseline Inventory.
If you set a different value for a month than your Baseline default, the system will use that value for that month instead. For instance, maybe you normally sell 50,000 of a product each month. But in December this year you want to sell up to 100,000. You would enter 100,000 in December for the Monthly Inventory, and the Baseline Inventory would stay set at 50,000 for all other months.
Syncing with GAM
Want to sync your Impression products with GAM? The above information about setting up the product is still relevant. However, there is some additional information you need. Read below to learn about setting up your Impression products for use with Google Ad Manager.
When creating the product, set the field ‘Ad Network’ to GAM. Typically, you will need to do this when initially creating the product. You can edit existing products and change that field as long as the item has not been added to an order. Once added to an order, that field becomes disabled and cannot be changed.
Once the ‘Ad Network’ field is set to GAM, the form will change slightly. The Ad Size field will be removed, and you will see two GAM specific fields that need to be filled out to create the product. These fields affect how the product is created in GAM and how the item is delivered. The following are brief overviews of what these GAM fields do. For more information, please reference the Google Ad Manager help center.
GAM Cost Type: Choose whether you want the item to go over as a CPD (cost per day), CPM (cost per thousand impressions), or CPC (cost per click) item. The pricing of units will change based on your type. If you have a CPD or CPC cost type, the units field will be priced as one unit to each unit price vs one thousand units to on unit price.
GAM Item Type: Based on your Cost Type, you will be limited on what Item Types you can select. For example, you can only select Sponsorship and Network for CPD cost items. Item Types in GAM help determine the priority for ad selection (Sponsorship item types in GAM will be prioritized over Bulk).
Sponsorship – A guaranteed line item, sponsorship item types deliver ads with a defined number of impressions and a set date range.
Standard – A guaranteed line item, standard item types deliver ads with a defined goal and set date range.
Network – Deliver ads with a set percentage of impressions. Network item types are similar to Sponsorships but are for non-guaranteed inventory.
Bulk – Deliver an ad with a defined impression goal. This goal works as a limit of how many impressions can be delivered.
Price Priority – Deliver ads mainly based on price. This item type is used to fill unsold inventory.
House – This item type is only used when no other item types are available to deliver. These are treated as if they are $0 products.
GAM Goal Type: The goal type is either lifetime or daily depending on the Item Type selected. Goals in GAM are the impressions an item is expected to deliver based on forecasting. The actual number of delivered impressions can vary from this goal.
GAM Goal Unit Type: You have the option of impressions or clicks. You can only use Impression for CPD, or Impressions/clicks for CPM or CPC. This field determines how your daily or lifetime goal for the item is calculated.
GAM Rotation Type: Choose how you want to rotate creative, evenly or optimized. This is applicable if your ad has multiple assets that need to be cycled through.
Even – Each asset for the line item will be displayed for an even amount of time and chosen at random.
Optimized – Assets that have higher click through rates will be displayed more often than assets with lower click through rates.
Use GAM Inventory: GAM has its own inventory management system, which you can use only if the GAM Cost Type is set to CPM, and the GAM Goal Unit Type is set to Impressions. When the product is configured this way, you can choose whether to use the system's internal inventory management or use GAM’s. If the product has a different configuration (CPD for example instead of CPM), you will be required to use teh system's inventory management, and the field will be automatically set to No.
If you are using GAM inventory, you will not see the Baseline Inventory and Monthly Inventory tabs on the product setup that you would otherwise.
You’ll also see an Expected Creatives section. This allows you to choose which ad sizes pass to GAM for that particular product. By default, all ad sizes will pass to GAM. If you change this setting to ‘Custom’ instead of ‘Default’, then you can pick and choose which sizes to pass to GAM. For any creative sizes selected, you will also be able to set other fields such as count and choose whether or not they are AMP-only. If you are using a Native creative, then you will also be required to select a Creative Template. Make sure to click save once you are finished making changes.
Updated 5/5/2023