How to consolidate the number of flights in a schedule

How to consolidate the number of flights in a schedule

What to do if you, have a multi flight you want to condense or a flight where the schedule changes week to week inside that flight?  Here are 3 workarounds.  Keep in mind these will not work when creating an XML for an Agency as they require dates.  For direct clients you either type in the dates in the "comment" section of Reporting or in the email you send the report in.  Look over the options below to pick the best one for your situation.   Option three is great if you have a huge schedule and you just need to condense it to provide your client a summary report of Cost, Spots, Reach, Impressions and so on.

1) If you are creating a schedule where the weeks in each month are consecutive or even non consecutive but the schedule is the same for each week throughout the campaign.
          Just create a  one week flight representing the recurring week.  You created a schedule representing what each week of the campaing looks like. 
          Now in setup, set the number of weeks to the total number of the weeks the campaign will run.  Example the campaign runs 4 months, 2 weeks a month.  Total numbef of weeks is 8.  Set the
          number of weeks for the flight to 8 and do not add dates.   Now you have a one flight schedule covering all the weeks and with the totals for the whole run. ( see below about removing the "weeks 1" from reporting).

In this example I created a one flight schedule.  The schedule represents one week and then set the number of weeks on that one flight to 8 for the whole campaign.  One flight for the whole campaign


Here is a video showing you how to do option 1


2) If you are creating a schedule where the schedule changes from week to week in the month.

Enter the same daypart more than once to represent the each week the schedule will run in a month.  That way you can treat each daypart line as its own week but still get totals for the whole month.  You can even group sets of dayparts and use description to say what week it is.  You can also label the flights to the names of the months ( see example below)  REMEMBER IN SETUP YOU ARE LEAVING THE FLIGHT AS JUST ONE WEEK AS THE SCHEDULE REPRESENTS ALL WEEKS SCHEDULED IN THAT MONTH.    Now you can play with spots and rates to reach the monthly spend goal.

Put each day part you are using in the month in 4 times to represent the four weeks ( or 2 weeks if say two of the four weeks that daypart is not going to be included) and adjust each line to get your total month spend goal.   if some dayparts will not change each week you could just put them in once if you want.  EXAMPLE based on the morning daypart will change each week over a 4 week run.

In the example below I renamed the flights to the names of the Months that the campaign will actualy air (do not include months that are skipped).  I then added the dayparts for each week in the month and used description to label which daypart is part of which week.   Since the first flight ( March)  has three weeks in the campaign I created three sets of dayparts.  The third week there is no morning show so I do not have the morning show listed in week three (Do not leave dayparts with no spots. If a line is not being used delete it)  The total at the top says 1 week but it actually now represents the total for the whole month.   (See below about setting up the report)


Setting up the Report.
When in reporting, cliick on the GEAR icon and then on Tables.  Uncheck the box next to  "1 week Total" and then click Apply and OK. This will remove most of the statements on the report about each flight be 1 week.  Remember this is sticky so when you create a new report where you want one week totals you need to go to the GEAR ICON, TABLES TAB and Recheck the box.


Now you Multi Flight Schedule will look something like this:



There are one week totals, each flight is the name of the month, each flight of dayparts are labled and the total for each month is at the bottom of each flight.  The total for the whole campaign is at the bottom of the report:



Here is a video showing how to do option 2




On reporting it will show the first flight as 1 week.    You can use an PDF editor to erase it from the saved report if you want.

3) Look to see what dayparts can be consolidated in the schedule.  

EXAMPLE: If across the campaign for the day part MoFr 6a-10a there are a total of 100 spots in varying weeks for the whole year.  You enter one schedule line  MoFr 6a-10a  and 100 spots.   Then the next line is another daypart and total spots for the whole campaign: MoFr 10a-3p 65 spots.  This would allow you to condense the entire campaign to possibly one flight.  You would just have to skip adding "starting" and "ending" broadcast weeks as well as number of weeks for the flight.   Think of it as more of a summary report than a detailed report of what happens every week of the campaign.  When you email the summary report to the client in a separate document or in the email itself, you can explain the dates of the campaign and what spots will air when.   This way the client has a simple one page summary report with what the Cost will be, nubmer of Spots, total Reach, Impressions and so on.

As for rates if they vary, you can provide an average rate.

Here is a simplified example. This would have been a 12 flight annual schedule but now condensed to one flight.  Although in totals it says one week it is for the whole campaign.


And the Report looks like this ( see further down to what adjustments I did)



To make the report look the way it does I did the following:

1) In Targeting I named the schedule 'Annual Summary"  It appear in the Product name above
2) in Description I wrote Annual next to each daypart

2) I named the Flight Tab "Total Run".  You of course can name it anything you want. It appears on the report right after the word "Flight".   To do that, double click on the flighting tab and then the rename popup window will appear.  Enter the name you want and click OK.


3) I removed the one week total from the Report so I would just get total run stats.   To do that, when in Reports click on the Gear Icon.

In the popup window click on the Tables tab and then uncheck the "1 Week Total" box. Then click Apply and Ok.


This is how I condensed a multi flight schedule to a single summary report.  NOTE: remember by unchecking the "One Week" total box it will stay that way on all future reports until you recheck it.



Helpful Links

How to use Flighting  Click Here
How to Create a Scheudule  Click Here
How to Add Daypart  Click Here
How to name Flighting Tabs  Click Here
How to Delele a daypart or insert a daypart line  Click Here