Planning Quality
The engine produces a playlist, reports how good that playlist is, and tells you in advance when your settings cannot all be satisfied.
Even distribution: the main quality measure
The key quality of a playlist is even spacing: the gaps between consecutive spots of a campaign should be as equal as possible. A campaign playing 3 times in a 60-second block should ideally play every 20 seconds; three plays bunched at the start of the block make a poor schedule.
Perfectly ideal gaps are rarely reachable, for a physical reason: ads occupy time. A spot cannot be shifted by less than the length of the ad standing next to it, so positions are quantized in steps of one ad length. Other campaigns also compete for the same positions.
The engine therefore works against a realistic target: for each campaign it computes the best achievable spacing given everything else in the mix, and aims for that.
Pre-flight check
Before solving, the engine analyses the input and reports anything that cannot work as requested:
| Warning | What it means |
|---|---|
Starting block out of range |
The requested starting block does not exist for that campaign’s frequency. The engine wraps it around to the equivalent valid block and tells you which one. |
Starting block overloaded |
Too many campaigns target the same starting block; they physically cannot all fit. The engine reports the smallest set of campaigns whose starting block must be relaxed, with the reason. |
Distribution ceiling degraded |
The campaign mix is dense enough that some campaigns cannot reach their ideal spacing. The engine reports the best spacing each affected campaign can get. |
Overbooking |
The campaigns demand more air time than the block provides. What happens next depends on the playback policy. |
These warnings arrive before any schedule is committed, so you can adjust settings — or accept the trade-off deliberately.
When rules collide: priorities
Some inputs are simply too dense for every rule to hold. The engine resolves conflicts in a fixed priority order:
-
Even distribution — the viewer-visible quality of the playlist.
-
Starting block — honored whenever the target block has room.
-
Category spread — even spacing of a separation category as a whole.
In practice: if a starting block is overloaded, the engine keeps campaigns evenly spread and moves the excess campaigns to another block, telling you which ones moved and why. It never sacrifices even distribution to force a starting block.
Verdicts: pass, warning, failure
After solving, every campaign — and the playlist as a whole — receives a verdict:
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
Pass |
The playlist reaches the best achievable quality for this input. Spacing matches the computed ceiling for every campaign. |
Warning |
The playlist is valid, but quality is slightly off the ceiling — within one ad-length step — or a soft rule (category spread, filler spacing) is bent. |
Failure |
A hard rule is broken: back-to-back spots of one campaign, separation violation, wrong play count, or unfilled air time. |
One failing campaign makes the whole playlist fail; otherwise a single warning anywhere makes the playlist a warning; otherwise it passes.
Every verdict short of a pass comes with reasons: which rule, the actual value, the expected value, and the context from the pre-flight check. A spacing warning, for example, shows the actual gap next to the best achievable gap so you can judge the difference yourself.
Expected deviations
The verdict system is context-aware. If the pre-flight check already told you that a starting block had to be relaxed, or that a campaign’s spacing ceiling is degraded, the final verdict measures the playlist against that adjusted expectation — you are not warned twice for the same accepted trade-off.