Activity Windows
Frequency says how often something plays while it is on air. Activity windows — the active periods of a campaign or an ad — say when it is on air at all.
An activity window is a calendar interval — from a start moment (inclusive) to an end moment (exclusive) — during which the entity may play. Windows exist on three levels: the campaign, each ad group, and each ad.
Three different questions about time, three different settings:
| Question | Answered by |
|---|---|
When does it participate in the playlist at all? |
Activity windows (this page) |
How often does it play while active? |
|
Where exactly in the block does a spot land? |
The engine decides, optimizing distribution quality |
Flighted schedules
An entity can carry several windows. A promo campaign active for two separate weeks with a pause in between is one campaign with two activity windows — no need to clone it.
How levels combine
The effective on-air time of an ad is the intersection of the windows above it:
effective(ad) = window(campaign) ∩ window(group) ∩ window(ad)
Three rules govern the intersection:
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The campaign is a hard boundary. Nothing plays outside the campaign’s windows, even if a group or ad declares a wider window — the excess is clipped.
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An empty level inherits its parent. A group or ad with no windows of its own adds no restriction: it is active whenever its parent is.
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An empty intersection means no plays. If the levels have no common time, the ad simply never appears — check for this when an ad mysteriously stays off air.
Windows and the rhythm
Inside its effective windows, an entity behaves exactly as its other settings dictate — period, group rotation, layout. Windows select which entities are on air at each calendar moment, and the loop structure and the spacing of everything else follow from the settings of those entities. When a window opens or closes, the playlist is re-projected from that moment with the updated cast.