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Insertion orders (IO) overview
Insertion orders (IOs) function as an organizational framework. 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.
Note that you may see IOs referred to as campaigns or campaign groups in other demand-side platforms (DSPs). Campaigns in the IQM platform, however, refer to the individual marketing strategies that you’ll create to define how you’ll serve ads, when those ads will be served, and where they’ll be placed. Refer to Campaigns overview for more information on campaigns.
Insertion orders (IOs) elements
The criteria that you define for an IO can include the following elements:
Scheduling: Choose a Start Date and End Date. The IO will ensure that the campaigns you’ve assigned to it won’t extend beyond the IO’s End Date.
Budget management: Define a budget (Spend or Impressions) to manage the spending of funds or impressions across all campaigns within the IO. Campaigns can include individual spend or impression budgets, but these campaigns will stop service once their cumulative spend reaches the IO budget that you’ve set.
Bid-price settings: Choose a Max Bid Price, which is the most you’re willing to bid for an impression across any of the IO’s campaigns, and regardless of whether or not any Bid Modifiers are applied.
Campaigns: Associate one or more campaigns to the IO to apply its settings to those strategies.
We also recommend reporting at the IO level to gain a comprehensive view of the performance and costs associated with each of the campaigns within the IO. This consolidated approach simplifies the process of tracking and assessing the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Refer to Reporting dimensions overview for more information.
Insertion orders (IOs) versus campaigns
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.
The majority of your parameters and settings are defined at the campaign level. Certain settings–such as scheduling and budgets–can be set at the IO level.
Refer to the table below for more information on the individual functions that can be managed at the campaign level and/or IO level:
Setting | Insertion Order (IO) | Campaign |
Scheduling | IO dates define the timeframe during which the IO’s campaigns can run. | Each campaign can feature varying flights that take place during the dates defined at the IO level. |
Budget | IO budgets set the cumulative spend or cumulative impressions across the IO’s campaigns. | Campaign budgets allocate the IO budget across individual campaigns. The campaigns will stop serving once that campaign’s budget is reached or the IO budget has been reached–whichever takes place first. |
Targeting | N/A - Set at campaign level | When you define the campaign’s targeting strategy, you choose which campaign targeting elements to apply in order to strike the balance between scale, efficiency, and performance. |
Bid Strategy | N/A - Set at campaign level | A campaign’s Bid Strategy determines how aggressively it should bid based on how much you’d like to spend, how you’d like to pace bidding, and how often you’d like for users to see an ad. |
Creatives | N/A - Set at campaign level | Select one creative format per campaign, and add one creative or multiple creative versions. |
Inventory | N/A - Set at campaign level | Specify where ads should be placed by targeting Open Exchange inventory, Contextual inventory, or Private Marketplace (PMP) inventory deals. |
Optimization | N/A - Set at campaign level | Adjust individual campaign strategies such as bid amounts, creative rotation, and targeting criteria for different target-audience segments to improve performance. |
Conversions | N/A - Set at campaign level | Implement and test conversion and postback pixels to measure how ad exposure impacts how your target audience interacts with your brand or its products and services. |
Reporting | Report at the IO level to consolidate each of its strategies and gain an overall view of cost and performance. | Report at the campaign level to track the performance of specific targeting strategies and inform optimization decisions for current and future campaigns. |
Key terms and concepts
Budget-based and impression-based insertion orders (IOs)
You’ll choose between budget-based or impression-based settings when you create a new IO. 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.
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, then review Create or manage a budget-based insertion order (IO) or Create or manage an impression-based insertion order (IO) when you’re ready to set one up for your campaigns.
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