View historical traffic alongside future impression opportunities to find better ways to segment and package inventory. On the Traffic forecast page, you’ll see a visual representation of your entire network’s impressions (Run of network); you can filter by a specific component (such as an ad unit) for more granular insights.
The future half of the chart represents opportunities for ads to serve, along with the impressions that are already reserved. This data can help coordinate your sales organization on how best to sell in the future. For example:
- On the Traffic forecast page, you identify segments of inventory that are growing and declining.
- You compare the performance of those segments with their current sell-through rates.
- Based on your analysis in steps 1 and 2, you encourage the sales team to sell more or less of certain segments accordingly.
Jump to: See the traffic forecast | No traffic forecast results | How data is determined
See the traffic forecast
To get started, follow along in the steps below.
- In Ad Manager, click Inventory
Traffic forecast.
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The Traffic forecast page appears, with historical traffic on the left.
Historical traffic includes unfilled impressions, and forecasted traffic includes impressions that have been reserved by existing line items. Learn more about how traffic forecast data is determined.
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Forecasted future traffic appears on the right.
For the forecasted future traffic, the light-blue shaded area is sell-through/reserved inventory.
Hover over any point in the charts to see the traffic for that day.
- The overall impression opportunity numbers are to the right of the chart, along with the percentage and number of impressions that are already reserved
- The smaller chart at the bottom shows the traffic for the entire supported timeframe. For traffic forecasting, Ad Manager currently supports up to 18 months of historical and 24 months of future traffic. Where Audience segments are targeted, we can display only 30 days of history in the Traffic Forecasting graph.
Additional traffic forecast options
- To see the traffic for a specific component such as an ad unit or a category of devices, click Targeting and then select the components from the dropdown.
Inventory sizes that are also automatically restricted by inventory type (such as 640x840v for video) are no longer available. You now need to select both an "Inventory size" and an "Inventory type" to ensure you’re only targeting a certain inventory type for that size. See an example.
- If needed, change the range of dates to appear in the main chart.
- Click Download CSV to download a report with the daily numbers from this page.
- Click Save as segment to save the selected targeting as a reusable portions of inventory against which you can create forecast adjustments or easily revisit your forecast.
- Click Segments to see the see the existing segments.
- Click Adjustments to make forecast adjustments based on upcoming traffic pattern changes.
No traffic forecast results
If the Traffic forecast page has values of "N/A" with empty charts, there likely isn’t enough historical traffic to generate a reliable forecast. You can check back periodically to see if we have gathered enough traffic data over time to forecast future impression opportunities. Note that it’s possible a network’s traffic may be too low to ever see forecast data on this page.
How traffic forecast data is determined
As the traffic forecast references a sample of the overall data, you may see some discrepancies when compared with the numbers in Ad Manager reporting. If you notice large discrepancies, please click Send feedback in the lower righthand corner of the Traffic forecast page and include the relevant numbers.
Historical data for the previous 24 hours may not be available, as the traffic forecast is still ingesting the new data for forecasting purposes.
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Historical ad opportunities | Learn about historical ad opportunities. |
| Forecasted ad opportunities |
Forecasted ad opportunities are the overall number of predicted impressions for the future dates in the selected time range. The projected values are estimates, reference a sample of the overall data, and are not guaranteed. Forecasted ad opportunities are the same as Forecasted impressions in the Future sell-through report. If you compare this number to the numbers when you check inventory, you may see some of the differences described in this article. |
| Reserved ad opportunities |
Reserved ad opportunities refer to the percentage and number of forecasted impressions that are already reserved by existing line items. This applies to the future dates in the selected time range. The projected values are estimates, reference a sample of the overall data, and are not guaranteed. Reserved ad opportunities are the same as Sell-through rate and Reserved impressions in the Future sell-through report. The potential differences described in this article apply. |
Learn how to report on video true opportunities.
