The Commercial Optimizer

The optimizer is a powerful ADvendio feature to modify and change your running media campaign line items according to your and your customers' needs. Here you can adjust discounts, quantities or amounts to reflect any business requirements. Create a new proposal or offer for your customer to confirm before "saving" and booking it to the ad server.

Step-by-step guide

To start the optimizer please select the campaign items you like to optimize in your media campaign and click on "Optimize Items”.

Open

1. Select Source and Reason

This will open the following screen:

Open

Fill out the following fields:

1. Select the Source for the Reason for the optimization. There are the following two options Order Optimization and Order Amendment:

   1. Proactive/Order Optimization - this optimization source makes changes directly to your Campaign Item. It does not create a new line item or initiate the cancellation of existing invoices. 

      1. Order Optimization should only be used for changes that have no impact on the invoice or finance-relevant criteria. For example, changing Targeting Criteria, Line Descriptions, Frequency Capping, or quantities/discounts for items that have not yet been invoiced.   

   2. Reactive/Order Amendment - this optimization source creates a new line item based on the configuration entered by the Commercial Optimizer. A cancellation Campaign Item will be created, and cancellation pre-invoices where necessary.

      1. Order Amendment can be used to make changes to every aspect of your Campaign Item. If an Item has been invoiced or used in any financial relevant process (such as the Accounting Records creation processes), then this Optimizer Source should be used. 

2. Pick one or more reasons and move with the arrows to the "Chosen" box.

3. If you like you can also add a comment in the Internal Comment or Comment text fields.

4. Either click on the Next button to continue or click the link back to the Media Campaign if you made a mistake.

The following screen will open the optimization Overview. The top shows the original campaign items you chose, and the bottom the modified campaign items:

You have three options for modifying your campaign:

1. To Optimize use the Edit Items Button

2. To Add a new position use Add Items Button

3. To Delete Item use button

2.1. Edit/Change Items

You can change any of the discounts or the quantity or other details within a campaign item. Check the little blue checkbox in front of the campaign item and press the Edit Item button. Next, you get a screen similar to the media configuration:

Change any field and press Save or Back if you made a mistake. The modified campaign item will now show up in the bottom part of the Overview screen:

If you would like to modify the same item again, you will not be able to mark the original but select the optimized campaign item and make any additional changes to it and save it again. You can also perform any of the other functions or delete the optimized campaign item. Either Save your Optimization or cancel by clicking the Back to the Media Campaign. 

2.2. Add a new position (Add Items)

You should choose this button if you like to extend the offer and add completely new positions to the media campaign. Clicking the Add Items button will lead you to the media search:

• To add a new Position press Add Items

• A new Media search window will open, use the search field to type your Campaign Item. The Search works similarly to what you know from adding campaign items right in the media configuration.

• Alternatively, you can pick your site, placement, ad type, etc. and press Filter to select your new product.  If you made a mistake you can press Reset. Also, you can remove unwanted items from Media Basket by pressing Delete.

• You can fill in the fields and tabs if needed. For more information refer to the 4.3 Media Configuration wiki page.

• Press Add Items to Optimizer

• Press Save or Back.

Click Save the Optimization or cancel by clicking the back to the media campaign. 

2.3. Delete Item

If you need to cancel or delete a campaign item you click the   Button (Cancel):

And you will see the Delete button:

2.3.1 ‘Negative’ Line item

You can review it once you have saved your optimizations. After approval (step 3) and activation (step 4) these "negative" line items are copied also as campaign items to the actual media campaign and your invoices get updated.

2.4. Disabled Items

Sometimes, when you're using the Optimizer, certain Campaign Items are not selectable. This can have different meanings. In most cases, the Item you are viewing is a past version, of an Item which has already been optimized. Additionally, there is also a small symbol. When you hover your mouse cursor above the symbol, you will see the explaining message.

It is also possible to disable Items for the Optimizer if they match certain criteria. If you are in doubt, please contact your system administrator, about what these criteria are. If you want to know more about this feature, take a look here: 8.4.4.1 Optimizer Feature Settings

3. Save Optimization and Approve the change

If you have saved your optimization you will need to get these changes approved. Either go through an approval workflow your administrators have set up or had someone with the rights to check the approval checkbox and mark it as approved. Here you have also the option to change the optimization again, create an optimization PDF, check the availability, and once approved, activate it.

Example screen for deleting an item: 

Following approval and activation of an Optimization, the new (green) and old (red) values associated with the Optimization can always be seen in the Optimizing Version. This is the case for both order amendments and order optimizations.

4. Activate Optimization

4.1 User Notification for Optimizer Future Call Activation

The optimizer feature ‘Future Call Activation’ will help your user to get notified via Chatter and receive a message when the job is finished (the user will also be notified in case of a job error). For this, you need to enable the settings 'EnableFutureCallActivation' in Optimizer Activation Feature Settings.

4.2 Activate Optimizer Version

After clicking the activate button for an Optimization with Order Optimization as the source, you will be asked to confirm the activation. In case you already had this Media Campaign (partly) invoice, you will see a warning message that the cancellation of these invoices may need to be handled manually.
If you want automatic cancellation of invoices then choose Order Amendment as Optimization Source.   

When you click the "activate" button for an Optimization with Order Amendment as the source, a new page will open. On this page, you will have three options in case you already had this Media Campaign (partly) invoiced. This will help you manage your invoices more efficiently.

Activate Optimizer Version with three following options:

• Cancellation Standard - You will cancel the selected campaign items on an accrual basis. This means that depending on the number and run-time of your items, many invoice documents could be created. For each period, one cancellation invoice will be generated.

• Cancellation and merge periods - You will cancel the selected campaign items to be merged over multiple periods. This means that depending on the number and run-time of your items for all affected periods, only one cancellation invoice will be generated.

• Cancellation and merge all - You will cancel the selected campaign items and combine those cancellations with any open invoice for this billing period. This means that depending on the number and run-time of your cancelled and open items, only one invoice will be generated.

After you selected one of the options, you will be directly forwarded to the optimized Media Campaign.

4.2.1 Optimization and Order Amendment Details

This table provides information on the use of Optimization and Order Amendment in various scenarios. The table contains details on three types of Order Amendments: Standard, Merge periods, and Merge all.

5. Error Messages

You can avoid the following error message by emptying out your "unique" custom fields. Read more here: 7.4.7 Add custom fields.