Booking a campaign

Where booking is enabled, campaigns aren't just monitored in the dashboard — they're created there. New campaign in the Campaigns module opens the booking form: one place to define what runs, where it's targeted, what it should deliver, and with which creatives.

Your form is configured for you

Before anything else, the most important thing to know: the booking form is not the same for every client. It's assembled from your organisation's setup —

• which sections and fields appear, and in what order
• which campaign types are on offer, and what they're called
• the terminology — one account's placements are another's line items
• defaults, allowed ranges, and what's mandatory before you can book
• which of the optional capabilities below are present

All of that reflects your sales process, your data, and what your inventory setup can support. So treat this page as a description of the shape of booking — your form will follow it, but the details on your screen are your own. Where fields need explaining individually, that belongs to your client documentation.

For administrators

The form's terminology follows account settings — the placement term, for example, is set in Administration → General.

The shape of a booking

A booking has two levels:

Level	Defines
Campaign	The commercial frame: who it's for, when it runs, the overall budget
Line items	The delivery: what's targeted, scheduled and served, and against which goals

A campaign contains one or more line items. That's the structural idea the whole form is built around — the left side is the form for whichever level you're editing, and a rail on the right shows the campaign's structure, so you can move between the campaign and its line items as the booking grows.

Campaign level

The campaign level typically covers:

• General information — name, your reference numbers (such as a PO number), the agency and advertiser, the product being advertised, and the flight dates
• Campaign type — a choice between the kinds of campaign your organisation books, each described on its card. The type you pick shapes the rest of the form: it decides which fields and sections the line items will offer
• Budget — the overall budget, and commercial terms such as a discount or a deal

Line item level

Each line item then defines a unit of delivery. Depending on your setup this covers:

• Product — what kind of inventory this line item runs on
• Targeting — audience, content and context: demographics, segments, genres, channels, programmes, geography, devices
• Budget and goals — this line item's share of the money and its delivery goal, such as target impressions
• Schedule — when it may air: dayparts, air-time windows, days of week
• Creatives — which creatives run, added once the flight dates are set

The form guides the order

You don't have to know the right sequence — the form enforces it gently. Line items unlock once the campaign essentials are in place, and until then the form lists exactly what's still needed. The same applies within sections: choices that depend on other choices stay disabled until their prerequisites are set, and anything the form can summarise for you is shown on collapsed sections so you can review a booking without opening every panel.

The summary rail

The right-hand rail keeps the running state of the booking in view while you type:

• the structure — the campaign and its line items, for navigation
• live totals — budget, target impressions, discount and the resulting CPM
• inventory availability — see below

Checking availability

Booking against inventory that can't deliver helps nobody, so the form can check availability before you commit: once a booking has enough information, it calculates whether the targeted inventory can support the goal in the chosen flight.

Use it as part of the booking rhythm — set up a line item, check availability, adjust targeting, budget or flight if it comes back tight, and book when the plan is realistic.

Drafts, and what happens after booking

A booking doesn't have to be finished in one sitting — it can be saved as a draft and picked up later. Once booked, the campaign joins the campaign list and moves through its delivery states — booked, active while in flight, completed at the end — with its pacing tracked like any other campaign. Which states your list shows (for example whether planned or cancelled campaigns appear separately) again follows your setup.

Optional capabilities

Beyond the core flow, booking supports a set of features that are enabled per client — they depend on your setup and what your inventory and data can support. If one of these isn't in your form, it isn't part of your current configuration; if you think it should be, that's a conversation with tvbeat rather than a setting you can flip.

Capability	What it does
Flight pacing	Controls how delivery is spread across the flight — evenly, or broken down week by week or month by month with a budget per period
Blackout periods	Date ranges within the flight when a line item must not air — around embargoes, sensitive dates or competing commitments
Creative rotation	Multiple creatives on one line item, each with a rotation share — and, where needed, its own date range within the flight
Frequency capping	Limits how often the same viewer sees the campaign within a chosen window
Audience targeting	Line items aimed at audience segments — including audiences defined in Audience manager — rather than content alone
Peak share & break position	Guarantees for where spots land: a minimum share delivered in peak time, or a preference for first or last position in the break
Rate-card pricing	CPM derived automatically from your rate card based on the line item's targeting, with the option to override it with a custom price
Deals & commercial terms	Bookings attached to negotiated deals, with their pricing reflected in the totals
Availability forecasting	The inventory check above — per-line item delivery forecasts before booking
Measurement add-ons	Extras attached at booking time, such as link tracking, brand-lift measurement or conversion tracking
Sponsorship elements	Sponsorship-specific inventory such as openers and credits, booked alongside standard delivery

WARNING

This list describes what the platform can do, not what any one account has. Your form is the source of truth for your setup.