Ad Decisioning Explainer

What You Can Control

Campaign Settings

Flight Dates – Set when your campaign starts and ends
Download Goals – Set a target number of impressions; the campaign automatically stops when it hits the goal
Priority – Higher priority campaigns get placed first when there's competition for ad slots

Targeting Options

Geographic:

Target by country, city, or postal/zip code
Can target multiple locations (e.g., "US and Canada" or "New York and Los Angeles")

Content:

Run across your entire podcast network, or
Target specific shows only
Exclude specific episodes if needed

Ad-Level Overrides:

Individual ads within a campaign can have their own targeting rules
Useful when one ad creative is region-specific but the campaign is broader

Pre-roll – Plays before the episode content
Mid-roll – Plays at a specific timestamp during the episode
Post-roll – Plays after the episode ends

Each slot can hold multiple ads, and you control whether each slot accepts your host-read ads, programmatic (VAST) ads, or both.

How We Decide Which Ads Play

When a listener requests an episode, here's what happens:

1. We Check What's Eligible

Is the campaign active and within its flight dates?
Has the campaign already hit its download goal?
Is the campaign on track with pacing, or running too hot?

2. We Apply Targeting

Does this campaign target this specific podcast?
Is this episode excluded from the campaign?
Does the listener's location match the geographic targeting?

3. We Prioritize

Campaigns are ranked by priority level
Campaigns that are behind on pacing get a boost to help them catch up
Campaigns that are ahead of pace get temporarily deprioritized to spread delivery evenly over time
When campaigns have equal priority, we randomize to ensure fair distribution

4. We Fill the Slots

For each ad slot in the episode:

First, we try to fill with your host-read ads (dynamic ads)
If there's still room and programmatic is enabled, we fill remaining space with VAST ads
If nothing's available, the slot stays empty (no awkward silence – we just don't insert anything)

Custom VAST Support

You can bring your own programmatic ad provider by setting custom VAST URLs for each slot position (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll). We support template variables so your provider gets the right context:

Podcast and episode identifiers
RSS feed URL
Media file URL
Cache-busting parameters

If you don't set a custom provider, we use our default programmatic partner.

You can reach out to us to setup custom VAST tags per podcast.

Tracking & Measurement

We follow IAB Podcast Measurement 2.2 standards:

Downloads only count when enough of the episode is actually downloaded (60+ seconds worth)
We filter out bots, crawlers, and duplicate requests
Each unique listener is only counted once per episode within a 24-hour window
Ad impressions are tracked with pixel firing and VAST event callbacks

NOTE: We are not yet IAB-Certified, but we do follow the specification.

When Ads Don't Play

Campaign Reasons

Campaign is paused or still in draft mode
Outside the flight dates
Already hit the download goal
Running ahead of pace (we'll serve it again soon, just spreading it out)
Targeting doesn't match this podcast, episode, or listener location

Slot Configuration

No ad slots configured on the episode
The slot doesn't allow the type of ad you're trying to serve
The slot is already full from higher-priority campaigns

No Available Ads

All eligible campaigns were filtered out by targeting
VAST provider returned no ads (common during low-demand periods)

Updated on: 27/11/2025

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!