With day and time targeting, you can set your line items to run only during specific hours or days. For example, you might set line items to run only on Tuesdays, or from 3 to 6 PM daily.
Set day and time targeting for a line item
Before you choose your day and time settings, you may want to run an hourly report to see what times of the day your ads receive the most traffic. A report helps determine if you're setting day and time settings to time intervals where you get higher or lower traffic.
When you run a forecast for a line item, the forecasting simulation takes into account the time period during which the line item is eligible to serve and the amount of traffic expected during that time period.
When you select the days of the week in step 4, this only has an effect if you also choose one of the following options:
- Select a “Start time” and “End time”: The time range applies to the selected days, while all other days are eligible for the entire day.
- Select the Don’t run on these days checkbox: The selected days are excluded, while the unselected days are eligible.
There’s no effect if you only select days of the week.
Before you save your changes, review the dynamic summary that appears below the time zone settings. In addition, read the common use cases for specific instructions.
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Navigate to Delivery
Orders.
- Create a new line item or find a line item.
- Under "Adjust delivery," select Set days and times and set the desired options.
- Select "Publisher's time zone" or "User's time zone".
Publisher time zone is based on the network time zone set when your Ad Manager network was created. Ensure you follow best practices if you're also applying geographic targeting to line items. - To set an active time range for certain days: Select a “Start time” and “End time” and then select the days when the time range will apply.
- To exclude certain days of the week: Select the days and then select Don’t run on these days.
- (Optional) Click Add time period to include an additional time period. Repeat steps a - c.
- Select "Publisher's time zone" or "User's time zone".
- Click Save.
Common use cases
| If you want to run the line item: |
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Do this: |
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Example: |
You want the line item to run only on Monday - Friday:
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| If you want to run the line item: |
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Do this: |
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Example: |
You want the line item to run 9 AM - 5 PM on Monday - Friday, and not at all on Saturday - Sunday:
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| If you want to run the line item: |
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Do this: |
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Example: |
You want the line item to run 1 PM - 4 PM on Saturday - Sunday, and all day Monday - Friday.
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Best practices with geographic targeting
If a line item targets specific geo locations, particularly places outside your network's normal traffic, best practice suggests that you select Publisher's time zone. Pacing doesn’t take into account geo targeting and, as a result, you may experience unexpected delivery issues.
Convert your publisher time zone to the desired time for the location you're targeting.
Example
- The publisher time zone is set to "America/New York" (Eastern Time).
- You apply geographic targeting for California to a line item, which is located in the Pacific time zone—a three-hour difference from New York.
- You want to serve ads to California users between 6 PM and 8 PM in the Pacific time zone.
In this scenario:
- Select Publisher's time zone.
- Set the start time to 9 PM and the end time to 11 PM.
This is equivalent to 6 PM and 8 PM in the Pacific time zone. - Under “Repeating on,” select Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, and Sat.
Reporting
Ads pace impression delivery according to the schedule you set, ending delivery at the defined hour. You may, however, notice recorded clicks for up to an hour after a scheduled delivery period ends. These clicks aren't errors; they occurred during the scheduled period.
Reports show all impressions in the publisher's time zone. If day and time were set to "User's time zone," reports reflect delivery in the publisher's time zone.
Example
The publisher time zone is New York, NY (Eastern time) and day and time were set to show from 6 PM to 9 PM in the user's time zone. Users based in Los Angeles (Pacific time) would see ads from that interval based on their local time. However, reports would show impressions for these users between 9 PM and midnight Eastern time.
