A: The primary function of an IO is to provide an effective means of organizing and managing campaigns that share similar traits. It’s also a means of managing the budgets of those campaigns. Along with their campaign-management capabilities, IOs serve as a contractual agreement. They outline the terms and conditions for one or more advertising campaigns, and ensure that those campaigns adhere to the guidelines and criteria that you define.

Refer to Insertion orders (IO) overview for more information.

A: While IOs function as an organizational framework, campaigns include your individual strategies and contain a set of targeting parameters, an ad format and versions, bidding strategies, and any other targeting settings that you specify. Refer to Insertion orders (IOs) versus campaigns for more information on the individual functions that can be managed at the campaign level and/or IO level.

A: The naming conventions of both IOs and campaigns can differ by DSP. Refer to the table below for a comparison of common naming conventions across DSPs.

A: The IO budget ensures that all assigned campaigns will stop serving once their cumulative spend reaches the monetary budget or impression budget that you’ve defined.

A: With budget-based IOs, all assigned campaigns will stop serving once their cumulative spend reaches the monetary budget that you’ve defined. With impression-based IOs, all assigned campaigns will stop serving once their cumulative served impressions reach the impression budget that you’ve defined.

Refer to Budget-based and impression-based insertion order (IO) overview for more information.

A: The choice between a budget-based or impression-based IO depends on your goals, budget preferences and flexibility, and desired outcomes. Refer to Budget-based and impression-based insertion order (IO) overview to learn more about the differences between these IO types and inform which type you should create for your campaigns.

A: Your IO-budget settings outweigh individual campaigns’ budget settings. The cumulative monetary spend or impressions of the campaigns associated with an IO won’t exceed the IO budget. This remains true even if an individual campaign hasn’t yet reached its campaign-level budget.

A: All campaigns associated with the IO will stop service once their cumulative monetary spend or impression spend reaches the IO budget that you’ve set. Each individual campaign will stop serving if they reach the IO budget or their individual campaign budget—whichever event occurs first.

A: Yes, you can increase the IO’s monetary or impression budget at any time. Each of the campaigns associated with the IO will resume spending as long as their individual campaign budgets haven’t been reached.

A: Refer to these resources for step-by-step instructions on creating a new IO:

A: The IO’s Start Date and End Date outweighs campaign-level date settings. The IO’s date settings are definitive, and campaigns won’t serve ads outside of these dates even if their individual dates occur before or after this time frame.

A: No, an IO’s Budget Type settings are locked once you create the IO. The IO and all of its associated campaigns will continue to reflect the budget-based or impression-based settings that you initially chose during IO setup.

A: Pacing and optimization is managed at the campaign level. Review the campaigns associated with the IO to determine which campaigns are pacing behind schedule, then refer to Troubleshoot a campaign that’s pacing behind to uncover the primary factors that influence campaigns’ pacing performance. Apply any necessary changes to help ensure your IO spends in full.

A: An Active IO is within the Start Date and End Date that you selected when you created the IO, and its monetary or impression budget hasn’t been reached. The campaigns within this IO are serving ads as long as they haven’t reached their individual campaign budget or End Date.

An Expired IO has reached its End Date that you selected when you created the IO. None of the campaigns within this IO are serving ads, regardless of whether they’ve reached their individual campaign budget or End Date. You can restore an expired IO by extending its End Date.

A Deleted IO was manually deleted by a user. You can view a Deleted IO, but you can’t reactivate it.

A: The status of a campaign remains Running if its End Date hasn’t yet been reached, regardless of spend or budget. However, the individual campaign will stop serving impressions once the IO budget or individual campaign budget is reached. Campaigns will feature a warning icon next to their names in the IQM platform when ad serving has stopped.

A: An IO features an Expired status once its End Date is reached. Note that the campaigns associated with the IO will still feature a Running status if their individual End Date hasn’t been reached; however, all campaigns associated with the expired IO will stop serving regardless of their individual date ranges.

You can extend an IO’s End Date to restore its Running status and resume serving ads.