When creating a new Line Item, open the Advertiser under which this Line will fall and select ‘New Line’. Next to the KPI selection you will see the word ‘Active’ with a box next to it. If you would like this campaign to be active, check the box. If you do not want the Line Item to be active, leave this box un-checked. You can return to these settings and check or un-check the Active box at any time.
If your Line Item has already been created and you would like to pause or re-activate the campaign, click on the name of the Line Item to open the Line Item Settings. If you are at the Advertiser level and do not see the Line Item you are looking for, toggle the ‘Active’ dropdown to ‘Inactive’. Then click on the name of the Line Item to open the Line Item Settings. Click the ‘Edit’ button in the top right corner of the screen and select the ‘Active’ box. To pause a campaign, un-check the box. To re-activate a campaign, check the box.

When creating a new Line Item, open the Advertiser under which this Line will fall and select ‘New Line’. Select the ‘Basic’ or ‘Advanced’ bubble to toggle between ‘Basic’ setup and Advanced setup. Basic mode will restrict the modifiable parameters for a simpler set-up.

When setting up a Line Item, select from the following Inventory Types:

• Web- This includes desktop & mobile web
• In-app – This runs on mobile applications
• CTV – CTV is a specific subset of OTT, defined as premium video content streamed only on televisions that are connected to the internet via Smart TV apps, Game Consoles and Set Top boxes.
• OTT – OTT is defined here as premium TV content delivered via an internet connection that is streamed on Mobile, Desktop, and Tablet devices ONLY.
• Open- Open allows for all inventory types and should only be used by advanced programmatic buyers. Exercise caution when using this inventory type to ensure you are getting the desired results. For example, if you apply a Site List, but do not specify ‘Web’ inventory, this will serve on these whitelisted sites and ANY app unless an App List is also applied.

Once Inventory Type is selected and the Line is submitted this cannot be changed.

The Pontiac algorithm will optimize the campaign based on the selected KPI.

• CTR (Click Through Rate): Select this KPI if you are trying to increase the number of clicks and overall traffic through a site. This is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the total number of impressions.
• CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): Select this KPI if you are trying to decrease the cost per conversion on the campaign. This is calculated by dividing the cost of the campaign by the number of conversions.
• vCTR (Viewable Click Through Rate): Select this KPI to increase the number of clicks on viewable ads. This is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the total number of VIEWABLE impressions.
• Viewability: Select this KPI to maximize the viewability of your campaign. Per IAB guidelines, an ad is considered Viewable if 50% of the pixels are in-view for 1 second or more. This is calculated by dividing the number of viewable impressions by total impressions served.
• VCR (Video Completion Rate): Select this KPI for video campaigns. This is calculated by dividing the number of video completions by the total number of videos served.
• Reach: This KPI will attempt to spend the entire allocated budget without optimizing to a performance metric

For KPI recommendations by Product see here:

Product Offerings & Targeting Strategies.

Each Line can serve only one Creative type and once the Line is submitted this cannot be changed.

• Banner
• Video
• Native
• Audio

• Budget by Spend: select ‘Budget by Spend’ and enter the total budget under ‘Lifetime Cost’. Pontiac will automatically fill the ‘Lifetime Impressions’, ‘Est. Daily Cost’ and ‘Est. Daily Imps’ fields based on the total cost and bid data. You can also enter a daily budget under ‘Est. Daily Cost’ and Pontiac will automatically fill the ‘Lifetime Cost’, ‘Lifetime Impressions’, and ‘Est. Daily Imps’ fields based on the daily cost and bid data.
• Budget by Impressions: select ‘Budget by Impressions’ and enter the total number of impressions desired. Pontiac will automatically fill the ‘Lifetime Cost’, ‘Est. Daily Cost’ and ‘Est. Daily Imps’ fields based on the number of impressions and bid data. You can also enter a daily impression budget under ‘Est. Daily Imps’ and Pontiac will automatically fill the ‘Lifetime Cost’, ‘Lifetime Impressions’, and ‘Est. Daily Cost’ fields based on the daily impressions and bid data.
• Dynamic Budget Multiplier: This is built in as a pacing function to ensure campaigns stay on target. It allows Pontiac to adjust the daily spend to either catch the campaign back up to perfect pacing, or slow down spend to keep the campaign from spending out too early. This will adjust daily.
• Budget Multiplier: If you do not utilize the dynamic budget multiplier, you can set your own budget multiplier that will pace out your campaign by multiplying your budget by this number. For example: a $100 budget with a 1.1 budget multiplier, the campaign will pace out to $110.
  If you are measuring your success of billings via a DoubleClick third-party tag, we recommend using 1.05 or 1.1 as the multiplier. This means you will serve 1.05x or (1.1x) your goal to ensure that you cover the discrepancy against the third-party tag.
• Soft Cap Budget: This function allows you to remove dynamic budget features to try to maintain stricter daily spend. The platform will attempt to spend the ‘Est Daily Cost’ each day, as opposed to spending to maintain pacing based on the lifetime budget. Actual spend may still exceed the soft cap budget and this function may not work if using ASAP pacing or targeting is too open. 

• Daily Frequency Cap: The daily frequency cap controls the maximum number of times an individual can be served an ad in a single day. 
• Lifetime Frequency Cap: The lifetime frequency cap controls the maximum number of times an individual can be served an ad in the lifetime of the campaign. 
• Dynamic Frequency: The dynamic frequency function allows the platform to adjust frequency caps based on the campaign’s pacing. If a campaign is pacing behind, this will increase the number of times a user can be served an ad. If the campaign is pacing ahead, this will decrease the number of times a user can be served an ad.
• 2 min frequency: This will only allow ads to serve once every 2 minutes to an individual user to avoid publishing your ad to a user multiple times on the same site

Even pacing: Impressions will be paced out evenly throughout the day. 
ASAP pacing: The campaign will attempt to spend the daily budget as quickly as possible. This will double your bid price and may cause your Line to pace ahead of schedule. Because ASAP pacing will remove the performance focus of the campaign, we only recommend using ASAP pacing for campaigns that are extremely behind on budget and/or nearing the end of the campaign, or for single-day campaigns. 

This box can only be checked when CPA is selected as the KPI. If the campaign is a remarketing campaign select this option, which will require a segment pixel to be attached. 

A new feature in the Line Item set up, the ‘Allow for Cookieless Users’ feature will enable impressions to serve to users that may have cookies disabled or for impressions where there is no cookie shared by the publisher. This feature is automatically applied for all CTV, OTT, and In App line items as requiring cookies in these environments may prevent campaigns from serving. It is also recommended to apply this feature for streaming Audio campaigns where cookies are unlikely to be available for targeting.

Including users without cookies will limit the accuracy of frequency caps and conversion tracking when cookies are not available.

For mobile web campaigns, ‘Allow for Cookieless Users’ must be applied to serve to Safari users, as Safari disables third-party cookies by default.

This is where you can control the CPM (cost per 1000 ads) of the campaign. Higher bids will help win more auctions and access higher quality inventory. Closing bids are an ‘all-in’ price and include the Pontiac 20% Software User Licensing Fee and any other relevant fees. 

• Min Bid: This is the minimum CPM you will accept entering auctions at. This will keep the lower quality impressions from being targeted as the campaign will not try to serve to places that are below a certain CPM threshold.
• Base Bid: This is the first bid that you enter an auction at. If the closing price comes in below the base bid, the CPM will bid the amount one cent more than the next highest bid.
• Max Bid: This is the highest CPM you would be willing to pay for impressions on the campaign. Once an auction reaches this point, the system will stop bidding on that placement.

For general bid recommendations see here: Bid Recommendations. 

The optimization schedule allows you to select the days of the week and the frequency at which the Pontiac algorithm will make optimizations to your campaign. To allow the algorithm to learn effectively we recommend optimizing only once per week to start. 
When your campaign reaches 35-50 clicks a day (if KPI is CTR) or 35-50 conversions a day (if KPI is CPA), you can change this to two to three times a week.

When CPA is selected as the KPI a sliding bar ‘CPA Weighting’ will appear next to the optimization schedule. You can choose to optimize more heavily toward post-click or post-view conversions. If your conversion pixel is using a hybrid trigger, we recommend a 50/50 weighting.

Foot Traffic Attribution is a type of Conversion reporting powered by OnSpot, that allows advertisers to track how many users were served an ad unit through Pontiac and then visited a commercial location. When this box is checked the campaign will receive Foot Traffic Attribution Reports. Once selected, the ‘Foot Traffic Reporting’ section will become available to add the addresses that you would like to track. Use the ‘Add Location button’ then follow the steps here to add each location that you would like to track: Adding Locations for Foot Traffic Attribution

Foot Traffic Attribution is only available in the United States at this time. The cost for Foot Traffic Attribution is as follows:

• $1.50 CPM for Banner, Native, Audio & Video creatives
• $4.00 CPM for CTV creatives

For campaigns receiving Foot Traffic reports, we recommend adding the associated CPM to the bid recommendations for the media type of the campaign.

Foot Traffic Attribution Reports can be found in the Reporting tab in the ‘Foot Traffic Studies’ section and metrics will also be available in the ‘Foot Traffic Reporting’ and ‘Performance’ sections of the Line Item. Foot Traffic metrics and reports will be updated once daily, on a 3-5 day delay.

See additional information on Foot Traffic Attribution here: Foot Traffic Attribution

Select the exchanges that you wish to buy media through. These are inventory sources that your ad will run through (also known as supply side platforms). You can select as many or as few exchanges as you would like, but as a starting point, we recommend you run on ALL exchanges, so you have access to the most inventory. To target an exchange, click the green plus button next to the name of the exchange in the list on the left-hand side. This will add this exchange to the campaign. To remove an exchange, click the red minus button next to the name of the exchange in the list on the right-hand side.

Recommended Exchanges by Creative Type:

• Audio: Use Deals and remove all Exchanges or use Spotify, Adswizz, Triton Digital Exchanges
• Banner: All – remove as needed according to performance
• CTV: Use Deals and remove all Exchanges
• Native A: Triplelift, Sharethrough, Microsoft
• Native B: Taboola
• Native C: Outbrain
• Native D: Microsoft
• OTT: Use Deals and remove all Exchanges
• Online Video: All – remove as needed according to performance, Deals are also available
  

For more information on how the ad exchange works, see here: How the Ad Exchange Works
See the full list of available exchanges here: Exchanges

These are private marketplace deals, or PMPs, are a method through which publishers privately grant access to premium inventory to a specific Advertiser or group of Advertisers. These PMPs are still real-time bidding environments in which the highest bid will win the impression, but the bidding will start at a specified price floor as defined by the publisher. You can see the full list of available PMPs in the ‘Inventory’ tab. This Deals list includes the Inventory Type, Media Type, App Type, Content Category, Price Floor and more. For more information on what each column means, see here: Open Exchange vs. Deal Inventory

The targeted Deals on a Line should match the Inventory Type and Media Type (Creative Type) of the Line Item.

Download a list of PMP Publishers here:

To review the complete details for all available PMPs, please review the ‘Deals’ table in the ‘Inventory’ tab of the platform.

To request access to a specific PMP, use the ‘Request Access’ button next to the name of the PMP. Please allow at least 2 business days for this to be completed, with longer turnaround times if a large number of Deals is requested. Once access is granted, the PMP will appear in the ‘Deal’ section of the Targeting Menu on the Line Item. Remove all exchanges from the Line Item targeting and associate the selected Deals using the green plus sign next to the name of the Deal. The Price Floor can be used as bid guidance, however we recommend adding at least $5-10 to this price for your Max bid as this is still a RTB environment and bids will need to be competitive in order to achieve scale on premium inventory.

In the ‘Geo’ tab of the ‘Edit Targeting’ section on the Line Item you can select countries, regions, and DMAs. It is required to select at least one ‘Country’. After the country level, you can apply any secondary level of geo targeting.

Geo targeting works like a funnel, where the most granular targeting condition must ALWAYS be met by the impression. For example if you add a zip code in Miami, the Miami DMA and the United States as a country, the Line will only be able to serve in the specified Zip Code as this is the most granular layer of targeting.

Each layer of targeting added must also coincide with the previous layers. For example, if you add the United States, the DMA or New York City and a Zip Code in Florida, the Line will not be able to serve because the DMA and Zip Code are conflicting.

Regions are states, provinces or municipalities.

DMAs, or Designated Marketing Areas, are available in the following countries:

• Aland Islands
• Australia
• Canada
• China (Diji Shi cities)
• Finland
• France (Departments)
• Germany (German Nielsen Metro Codes)
• Korea, Republic of (Si/Gun/Gu)
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Russian Federation (Federal Districts)
• United Kingdom (ITV Regions)
• United States (DMAs)

Select the times of day and days of the week you would like to serve under the ‘Edit Targeting’ section of the Line Item, under the ‘Day Parting’ section. Day parts target users according to the time zone they are located in when the ad is served.

For example, a Line set to serve from 9am to 9pm in the U.S., will start serving at 9am EST to users on the eastern coast, and will start serving to users on the western coast at 9am PST. To serve ads across the U.S. at the same time in every time zone, you will need to set-up a line for each time zone and set the day parts accordingly.

If the box is checked next to the day of the week, the campaign will serve on this day. To remove a day, uncheck the box. 

If no site list is attached, domain targeting will be open. To build a custom site or app list go to the ‘Inventory’ tab and select ‘New Site List’ or ‘New App List’. Once a list is saved it will automatically appear in under the ‘Site lists’ or ‘App lists’ section of the ‘Targeting’ menu of a Line item. There are also premade site lists and app lists for different categories that you can choose from. Once created, an app or site list can be implemented as either an ‘Allow list’ (target) or ‘Block list’ (avoid). 
To associate a site or app list to the campaign, choose ‘Edit Targeting’, then go to the ‘Site lists’ or ‘App lists’ tab, choose the ‘Block List’ bubble if this is a list of sites or apps you want to avoid, or the ‘Allow list’ bubble if this is a list of sites or apps you want to target. Click on the green plus sign next to the name of the list you would like to target. Associated site and app lists should appear on the right-side of the screen. 

The following are definitions of the default Pontiac Site Lists:

• Arts and Performance –  Sites of various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.
• Auto – Sites in the automotive industry or sites for people interested in auto.
• Beauty and Fitness – Sites for inner and outer beauty and health.
• Books and Literature – Sites for book/literature lovers.
• Business and Industry – Sites for business minded people.
• Finance – Sites for financial information, trends, and advice.
• Food and Drink – Sites for foodies, recipes, and restaurants.
• Gaming – Sites to play entertaining games on.
• Health – Sites for fitness, general health, and health trends.
• Hobbies and Interests – Sites for people who interested in popular extracurricular activities.
• Home and Garden – Sites for home décor, home maintenance, and sites for outdoor gardening.
• Internet and Telecom – Includes mostly tech sites and sites for people interested in tech, internet, and telcom.
• Job and Education – Sites for people who are looking for new jobs or want to further their education.
• Law and Government – Sites for legal advice or for government information.
• News – Includes major national news sites.
• Online Communities – Sites for communities whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests.
• People and Society – Includes world culture and pop culture sites.
• Performance – High performing sites: Premium inventory and High CTRs.
• Pets and Animals – Sites for pet lovers, pet information, animal lovers, and animal information.
• Real Estate – Sites for rentals, house listings, and people interested in real estate/market.
• Reference – Sites for people who are looking for further information. Some sample sites from this list are dictonary.com, usingenglish.com, and howstuffworks.com.
• Science – Sites for scientists or people interested in science or doing scientific research/experiments.
• Shopping – Sites for clothing stores, fashion, and fashion trends.
• Sports – Sites on information on national sport games and sport news.
• Travel – Sites for vacations and travel tips.
• World Localities – Sites for local and world news.

The following are the definitions of the default Pontiac App Lists:

• Auto – car shopping & reviews
• Business & Finance – business news, finance news, stocks, trading, budgeting tools, currency converters, crypto
• Entertainment – literature, cinema review, pop culture, celebrity news and trends
• Fitness & Health – workout plans, fitness guides, meal planning, calorie counters, step trackers
• Food – food delivery, recipes, cookbooks, nutrition
• Games – trivia, word search, puzzles, poker & card games, chess, sudoku
• Lifestyle & Shopping – style, fashion, shopping, home & garden
• Music – radio, music downloaders, instrument
• News – national & local news apps
• OTT/CTV – premium streaming TV for OTT and CTV
• Premium – tier 1 publishers
• Sports – sports news, scores & streaming
• Tools & Reference – weather, calculators, dictionaries, translators, maps
• Travel – hotels, flights, travel guides

Target zip codes in the United States, or other nations through their regional postal code system. By targeting a set of zip codes, a client’s ads will only serve in relevant areas. You can use as few zip codes as needed, but keep in mind that a small set of zip codes will limit delivery. These zip codes can be created in either the ‘Audiences’ tab through the custom zip code audience, or in the Line item targeting menu.
To create a list of zip codes in the Line item targeting menu, select the country from the dropdown menu and paste your zip codes into the textbox separated by a comma. To add a country to the drop-down menu, email your Account Manager.
If you are using zip codes and not achieving the desired scale, try using the ‘Expand Zip Targets’ feature. By adding additional zip codes within a tight radius you may achieve better scale and still stay in the target area. In the Targeting menu, open the zip code tab. Enter a radius in meters and select ‘Get Zips’. This will find zip codes within this radius from the center point of the zip code/s entered. A window will open showing you the list of zip codes found within this radius. Select ‘Add Zips’ to add the new zip codes to the targeting on the Line Item.

Inventory Type will be selected in the Line Item Setup. In this Inventory Targeting tab you will see the Inventory type that was selected in the Line Item settings appears with a check box.
If the Inventory type selected was ‘Web’, this is where you can specify if you would like to target Desktop, Mobile-Web, Tablets or a combination of the three.
If you selected  ‘CTV’ as the inventory type, you can specify if you would like to target TV, Game Consoles or Set Top Box. Return to the Line Item parameters to change the Inventory type.
You can also choose operating systems here including: Android, Apple iOS, Apple Mac and Microsoft Windows. For ‘Connected TV’ additional choices of Roku OS, Samsung OS, Unknown, Apple TV, Chrome OS, Life is Good OS, and PlayStation 4 OS are available. More specific Operating Systems can be chosen in the ‘Operating Systems’ tab.
 

When Video is selected as the Creative type, a Video tab will appear in the Targeting menu to select Playback Type and Player Size.

Playback Type

• MidRoll: instream placement where ad plays during streaming video content
• Outstream: outstream video is placed in non-video environments among other content.
• PostRoll: instream placement where ad plays after streaming video content
• PreRoll: instream placement where ad plays before streaming video content

Player Size

These sizes are publisher defined and do not have exact specifications, however, there are examples of each below for reference.
Large Player Size:


Medium Player Size:

Small Player Size:

If you want your Line item to aim for a specific viewability threshold, check the ‘Enable Viewability Targeting’ box, and enter the viewability threshold you wish to target in the ‘Viewability Target’ area. It is not recommended to deploy this feature for CTV or In-app campaigns as this targeting is not typically available in these environments, and it can prevent the Line from serving.

This is not a guarantee, but rather a benchmark. The platform will determine how likely an impression is to be viewable through pre-bidding technology. Per IAB guidelines, an ad is considered viewable if 50% of the pixels are in-view for 1 second or more. Using a high threshold may limit delivery of the Line. While the IAB benchmark is 70%, this may limit the number of impressions that can be won causing the campaign to under pace. If you are using a viewability threshold, this may limit overall delivery of the campaign, so it is recommended to further increase your bids to counteract this. 

Choose from over 200 specific Operating Systems to target, see the full list here: Operating Systems

Operating System targeting can be used, but does come with some limitations. Due to inconsistent naming conventions used by app providers and mobile carriers, OS targeting methods for mobile apps are only available for a small portion of inventory, so targeting these may significantly limit scale. A significant portion of impressions are also from unknown browsers and operating systems, so it is recommended to include ‘Unknown’ to avoid excluding these impressions.

Choose to target specific Device Models from over 14,000 offerings. See the full list of Device Models that you can target here: Device Models

Device Model targeting can be used, but comes with some limitations. Due to inconsistent naming conventions used by app providers and mobile carriers, the device type and device make/model targeting methods for mobile apps are only available for a small portion of inventory and may significantly reduce potential scale.

A significant portion of impressions are also from unknown browsers and operating systems, so it is recommended to include ‘Unknown’ to avoid excluding these impressions.

The Ads.txt filter is a feature that can be used to restrict domains purchased through the platform to only come from sellers which are defined in the publisher’s Ads.txt file. Ads.txt stands for Authorized Digital Sellers and is a project that aims to create transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. In the Ads.txt file, publishers can declare the authorized sellers for their inventory. Ensuring that domains can only be purchased through this list of sellers defined by the publisher, this increases protections against fraudulent inventory and authenticates that the URL passed in the ad call is an accurate representation of the inventory being bought and the seller it is coming from. You can see an example of an ads.txt file here: cnn.com/ads.txt

For more information on the Ads.txt project, visit the IAB website here: https://iabtechlab.com/ads-txt-about

To enable the Ads.txt feature, open the ‘Edit Targeting’ section of a Line Item. In the ‘Ads.txt’ tab, check the box, then ‘Save’ and submit the Line. This feature can only be applied to ‘Web’ inventory and will not affect targeting for Deal inventory or In-App inventory. The Ads.txt file is only applicable to domains sold through the Open Exchange.

Select from Pontiac Curated Deal Lists, or create your own custom list that can be used across all Advertisers and Lines for a quick and easy set-up process. In the ‘Inventory’ tab under ‘Deal Lists’, you will see the existing Pontiac curated lists. To review the Deals included in these lists, click on the name of the list. Deals included will be listed on the right-hand side of the screen. These lists cannot be edited. You will only be able to see and target the Deals in this list that you have access to. To request access to Deals, use the ‘Request Access’ button where the Deal is listed in the ‘Deal’ table above.

To create your own custom list, go to the ‘Inventory’ tab and select, ‘New Deal List’, then use the green plus button to add Deals to the list. Give the list a name, and ‘Save’. This list will then become available in the ‘Targeting’ menu of all of your Line Items to quickly associate all included Deals.

To edit a Line Item, enter the Advertiser tab and find the Line Item in question. Click on the name of the Line Item to open the Line Item menu, then click the ‘Edit’ button in the upper right. Make the changes to the Line Item parameters or targeting, then click ‘Submit’ to save the changes.

The following settings cannot be changed once the Line Item is submitted – Inventory Type, Creative Type, Budget type (by spend or by impressions), and Foot Traffic Reporting. The Start Date for the campaign cannot be changed once that date has passed.

To clone, or create copy, of an existing Line Item, open the Line Item and select ‘Clone’ in the upper right-hand side of the screen. This will create a copy of the Line Item, where you can then edit the settings or make changes to the existing set-up. Give the new version of the Line a name, verify the budgets and the flight dates. Change any other parameters that need to be adjusted, then ‘Submit’ to save the new Line Item.

To turn ‘off’ or de-activate a Line Item, open the Line Item and select ‘Edit’. Un-check the ‘Active’ box, then click ‘Submit’. A de-activated Line Item will not be eligible to spend or serve impressions. In order to maintain the integrity of the data in the platform, Line Items cannot be deleted, they must be de-activated instead.

At times, Audience Segments and Deals will expire or will no longer be available for use. If you are targeting an Audience segment or Deal on an active Line, the Line will be flagged with a yellow caution symbol as the status. Hover over this symbol to read the caution message. This will indicate whether it is an audience segment or a deal that is expired as well as the ID number for the expired object.

When a Line contains an expired object, the Line will no longer be able to optimize. This includes system updates to daily budgets, frequencies, and other dynamic controls for pacing as well as the optimization splits made by the Pontiac algorithm. You will also be unable to make any edits or changes to the Line item until the expired object is removed. It is recommended whenever you see this flag to immediately remove the expired object.

In the case of custom audiences, these expire 180 days after creation. However, the data within the audience may still be usable. For example, zip codes are data that will not expire. To continue using this audience, you will need to ‘Force Refresh’ the audience to extend the expiration date. To do this, go to the Audiences tab and filter the ‘Status’ to ‘Inactive’. Find the expired Audience, open it, and click the ‘Force Refresh’ button. This will extend the expiration date for another 180 days. In this case you will not need to remove the Audience from the Line, it will automatically update the status.

For Third Party Audiences that expire, it is recommended to look for other audiences in the category to replace the expired audience.

If you are targeting an expired Deal, look through the Deals table for a similar option to replace the expired Deal. New Deals are added to the table each month and Publishers frequently push us new versions of their Deals, so you may be able to find the same Deal with a higher ‘Deal ID’ that can be utilized to replace the expired version.