Campaigns are the organization of what ads appear in what zones and how often across your site. Sometimes, more than one campaign will be scheduled to display ads in the same zones. Campaign weights are a tool that allows you to control which campaigns will get the most share of voice when multiple campaigns use the same zone. Adjusting a campaign weight will change which campaigns rotate more or less frequently through shared zones.

There are two subtypes of campaign weights, priority based and percentage based. The priority based campaign weights take the importance of getting a campaign viewed first in a zone and set display intervals based on that. Percentage based campaign weights take into account how many campaigns are sharing a zone and then allocate the amount of exposure a campaign will receive in relation to each other.

See the documentation on Create a Campaign to see where you can set up campaign weights.

The information below breaks down the different options you have to set campaign weights.

• • • • • Priority Based Campaign Weights
        • Percentage Based Campaign Weights

Priority Based Campaign Weights

These campaign weights are simple, a campaign is either given priority in display for a zone or it is not.

Remnant

This means a campaign will only run when there are no other campaigns of a higher priority. This is useful for house ads, PSAs, and any ads that do not have an impression target deadline that needs to be met. Basically, think of a remnant campaign as being a placeholder until other campaigns need the zone space.

Sponsorship

A sponsorship campaign will always take priority over any other campaigns assigned to zones. No matter what, the campaign will be given display time for its ads in the selected zones until the impression target or end date ends the campaign.

If a zone has more than one sponsorship level campaign, then impressions will be divided evenly among the campaigns for equal share of voice. 

Percentage Based Campaign Weights

Understanding how percentage based campaign weights works requires you to know how many campaigns will be competing for a zone and what weights they all have. To figure out the share of voice that each campaign has will be a simple math problem where each weight has a number equivalent. A more detailed explanation and examples are given below.

Low

A campaign that is given a low value will appear less often compared to default, or high campaigns. For the equation to determine share of voice, selecting low is given the value of .5.

Default

As the name states, this option is automatically selected when creating campaigns.This option assumes a medium, or average importance for a campaign to run. If all of the campaigns sharing a zone are default, then they will all be given an equal number of impressions. For the equation to determine share of voice, selecting default is given the value of 1. 

High

A campaign that is given a high value will appear more often compared to low or default campaigns. The only campaign that would appear more than a high campaign would be a sponsorship one, explained above. For the equation to determine the share of voice, selecting high is given the value of 1.5.

Custom

If you select a custom weight, a new field will open for you to enter a number between 1 and 100. The number you enter will be divided by 100, and the resulting value will be used to calculate the share of voice the campaign will receive. For example a custom weight of 65 will become .65.

Now that the value of each campaign option have been explained, it’s time to see how these values come together to determine a campaign’s share of voice. 

First, list out all of the different campaigns and their weights that are sharing a zone. Make sure to include the value given for each weight. See below for an example:

• • • Campaign One – Low – .5
    • Campaign Two – Default – 1
    • Campaign Three – Low – .5
    • Campaign Four – High – 1.5
    • Campaign Five – Custom – .75

Next, take all of the values and add them up.

.5 + 1 + .5 + 1.5 + .75 = 4.25

Now, to find out the percentage of impressions each campaign will get, divide the value weight by the total you calculated. 

Campaign One	.5/4.25 = .117	About 12% of impressions
Campaign Two	1/4.25 = .235	About 23% of impressions
Campaign Three	.5/4.25 = .117	About 12% of impressions
Campaign Four	1.5/4.25=.352	About 35% of impressions
Campaign Five	.75/4.25=.176	About 18% of impressions

To summarize, percentage weights work the following way:

1. 1. 1. Know the number and weight value of every campaign in a zone
      2. Add up the weight values of the zone
      3. Divide each campaigns weight value by the total of the zone to find out the share of voice the campaign will receive

Note that it is possible to have Remnant and Sponsorship campaigns sharing zones with percentage based campaigns. This does not fundamentally change the behavior of either. Sponsorship campaigns will still override any other campaign, and Remnant will still only run if there are no other campaigns that need the zone.

As you can see, campaign weights can be as complicated, or as simple as you want. It is incredibly important to be aware of all the campaigns in a zone when assigning campaign weights in order to get the desired display pattern.