Playback Policies

The playback policy of a playlist answers the two questions every playlist must settle:

  • Empty time — must every block be filled to the brim, or are gaps acceptable?

  • Overbooking — when campaigns demand more time than exists, is that an error, or should everyone gracefully slow down?

The four planning policies are the four combinations of those two answers. Policies are named below as they appear in the playlist settings:

Blocks filled completely Gaps allowed

Overbooking rejected

Adhere frequency

Exceed frequency

Overbooking degrades gracefully

Exact frequency with overbooking

Decrease frequency
Policy Behavior

Adhere frequency

Every campaign plays at exactly its requested frequency; blocks are filled completely, with fillers covering unsold time. Campaigns that do not fit are rejected as overbooked. The strictest and most common policy.

Exact frequency with overbooking

Blocks filled completely, and overbooking is absorbed: nobody is dropped, everyone slows down proportionally.

Exceed frequency

Each campaign plays at least its requested number of times; the actual rhythm and block length float to accommodate the mix. Gaps are acceptable; no fillers required.

Decrease frequency

Gaps acceptable, overbooking absorbed by proportional slow-down. The most permissive planning policy.

Ignore frequency

No frequency constraints at all — content plays without a rhythmic contract.

Manual

The playlist is assembled by hand; the planning engine is not involved.
Full-block policies need fillers to deliver on "no dead air". Without any fillers configured, they cannot fill what commerce leaves empty and effectively behave like their gaps-allowed counterparts.

Overbooking behavior

Overbooking means the campaigns together demand more air time per block than the block provides. The two strategies respond differently — and both keep the playlist rhythmically consistent (frequencies and block length stay in step, so spacing quality survives):

Strategy What happens

Graceful degradation (Exact frequency with overbooking, Decrease frequency)

No campaign is dropped. The effective block stretches until everything fits, and every campaign’s period grows by the same factor: a campaign that played twice as often as another still plays twice as often. Frequencies degrade; ratios between campaigns are preserved.

Rejection (Adhere frequency, Exceed frequency)

Campaigns that do not fit are rejected and reported as overbooked; the rest play at their exact requested frequencies.

The pre-flight check detects overbooking before planning, so a rejection never comes as a surprise.

The "Try not to lower frequency" option

Under graceful degradation, every campaign normally slows down proportionally. Enabling Try not to lower frequency on a campaign exempts it: its frequency stays exactly as requested even while the rest of the mix stretches.

This is a deliberate trade: the campaign keeps its frequency, but because it no longer shares the stretched rhythm of the block, its spots can drift toward uneven spacing — occasionally bunching together. The verdict reports this as a distribution warning, the price of the exemption.

Two boundaries keep the option sane:

  • It holds only while campaigns carrying the option together stay within half the block. Beyond that, protecting their frequency would destroy the playlist for everyone, and their frequency is reduced like the rest.

  • Use it sparingly — one contractually rigid campaign is a typical case. Every exempted campaign removes flexibility the engine needs to keep the whole playlist even.