Check available inventory

The inventory forecast feature helps you confirm whether ad impressions or clicks are available before you book inventory in a line item. If the forecast confirms that ad inventory is available, you can move the forecast data into a line item in a new or existing order. With inventory forecasts, you can optimize your ad inventory and prevent overbooking or underselling.

The two most common reasons for checking available inventory are:

• To ensure there’s enough inventory available when creating a new line item, and

• To confirm a saved line item is slated to reach its goal; and if not, to determine what changes to settings or targeting could increase availability.

The forecasting numbers only take standard and sponsorship line items (guaranteed line items) into account when determining which line item gets allocated for each forecasted impression. Note that guaranteed line items with a status of "Paused" or "Draft", as well as line items with no creatives, are also eligible to be allocated impressions. Learn how inventory forecasting determines its predictions.

Check available inventory for a new line item

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Click Delivery  Orders or click Delivery  Line items. Then, click Forecasting.
   • Manually create an order or create a line item.
3. Select the type of ad you want to serve:
   • Display: Create a variety of rich ad experiences from standard image ads and Campaign Manager 360 URLs to built-in forms and custom solutions.
     Choose the Master/companion option to set up this line item to serve sets of creatives together. Learn more about setting up master/companion creatives.
     Only available in Google Ad Manager 360.
   • Video: Create engaging video ad experiences that appear during streaming content, both in video players and on set-top boxes. Also includes video ads that play outside a video player and overlay ads that complement streaming video ads. Learn more about setting up new line items with video.
4. Click Select.
5. Select the line item type, priority, and priority value.
6. Next to Expected creatives, enter your inventory sizes.
7. Under Protections (optional), select whether you want to consider the impact of advertiser protections in this forecast. How protections affect delivery and forecasting

   Ad exclusions prevent a category of line items from running on certain parts of your sites/apps. Unified advertiser/brand blocks exclude specific advertisers/brand from all or a portion of inventory across Ad Manager.

   These protections can affect the inventory of line items in various advertisers, which can potentially change the forecasting numbers for this line item.

   • If you select the check box next to Consider the impact of advertiser protections, the Advertiser and Labels fields will appear, though only the Advertiser field is required. The forecast will be based on the number of impressions the line item is predicted to achieve in the selected advertiser, taking advertiser exclusions, ad exclusions, and other forecasting settings into account.

     Selecting an unverified advertiser may greatly reduce the number of available and reserved impressions for this line item because of the exclusion rules. For example, If you have an advertiser exclusion that blocks unverified advertisers, and you select an unverified advertiser for the forecast, that advertiser won’t be able to serve on the inventory. Therefore, line items in that advertiser won’t receive any available or reserved impressions in the forecast.

   • If you deselect the check box, the Advertiser and Labels fields will disappear, and the forecast won’t take the advertiser/brand protections or ad exclusions into account. This is a good option if you want to see the available inventory for a prospective line item, but the new advertiser has either not yet been created or is not linked to a verified advertiser in Ad Manager.

8. Under Competitive exclusion settings (optional), enable Same advertiser exception to allow line items from the advertiser to show on the same page despite competitive exclusion labels.
9. Under Viewability provider (optional), enter third-party companies used to measure creative viewability.

10. Enter your flight dates.

    You can run a forecast up to two years into the future. Forecasting beyond that timeframe would be unrealistic.

11. Enter Blackouts, which are time periods when ad requests aren't sent to line items or shared with assignment partners.
12. Next to "Quantity", select Max available if you don’t have a specific impression or click goal in mind for the prospective line item. Or, select Goal and enter the number of impressions or clicks you want.
    Example

    You might select Max available if, for example, an advertiser asks you how many impressions are available for a campaign it’s contemplating booking with you. You could then view the competing line items screen to gauge how running the campaign at the max number would affect booked inventory, and vice versa.

    You might select Goal if, for example, an advertiser asks you if there are 1,000,000 available impressions available for a campaign it’s contemplating booking with you. You could then view the competing line items screen to gauge how running the campaign for 1,000,000 impressions would affect booked inventory, and vice versa.
13. (Optional) Apply delivery adjustments and targeting criteria to your forecast.
    The "Limit EEA serving" setting doesn't always appear:

    • If you're using the new forecasting user interface: The "Limit EEA serving" setting appears if you have elected to "Limit line items" on the "EU user consent" page. The default setting is Don't serve for any EEA ad requests.
    • If you revert to the previous forecasting user interface: You won't see the "Limit EEA serving" setting. However, if you have elected to "Limit line items" on the "EU user consent" page, the default setting, Don't serve for any EEA ad requests, will still be applied to the forecast.

14. Click Check inventory.

    A forecast bar appears along with detailed information on the availability of ad impressions for your proposed line item. Learn more about delivery forecast display.

15. Click View contending line items to gauge the effect that booking the prospective line item would have on booked line items, and vice versa. Note that non-guaranteed line items aren't considered booked inventory by forecasting.
16. Click View breakdown by targeting to see impression information for each value of each targeted criterion. 
    Only available in Google Ad Manager 360.
17. After you review this information, you can edit line item delivery priorities as needed and click Check inventory to run the forecast again.
18. You can click Export to export the details to a spreadsheet.

19. You can optionally convert an inventory forecast into an order: Enter a quantity and an order name in the Order field at the bottom of the screen, then click Continue.

    All of the information from your forecast will be imported into your new order.

Check available inventory for an existing line item

If a line item’s delivery bar indicates a risk of underdelivery, you can run a forecast to see if inventory will become available at a later date or check what changes to settings or targeting could increase availability.

To check inventory for an existing line item:

1. Click the line item for which you want to run a forecast.
2. Click the Forecast tab from within the line item. This displays the forecast bar and an analysis of the remaining goal. Learn more about forecast displays.
3. Click View contending line items to determine if any other line items are contributing to your line item’s underdelivery.
4. Click View breakdown by targeting to see impression information for each value of each targeted criterion.
   Only available in Google Ad Manager 360.
5. You can click Export  to export the details to a spreadsheet.
6. After you review this information, you can edit line item delivery priorities as necessary and run the forecast again.