Pacing — is the campaign delivering on schedule

Pacing is how far a campaign has delivered against how far it has run. A flight that is 60% through its dates and has delivered 60% of its plan is pacing on target; 40% is under-pacing, and 80% is over-pacing. It is a mid-flight question, and it is the only one that can still be answered usefully.

Both directions are a problem

Under-pacing is the obvious one: at this rate the campaign finishes short of its guarantee, and the shortfall turns into a makegood the seller owes out of inventory that will by then be sold to someone else. Over-pacing is the quieter one — the budget is consumed before the flight ends, the last weeks go dark, and a campaign built to run against a product launch stops in the middle of it.

What it is measured in

Whatever the campaign was sold in. Against an audience guarantee it is GRP delivered against GRP planned. Against a fixed schedule it is spots aired against spots booked. Against a budget it is spend against flight elapsed. The three do not move together — a campaign can pace on spots and lag badly on ratings if the programmes it ran in under-performed — so a seller who tracks only one of them finds out about the other in post-buy.

Why it is usually found out too late

Pacing is only visible if airings, ratings and the plan are in one place while the campaign is still running. Where they are three exports reconciled at month end, the first honest delivery number arrives after the flight has closed — by which point nothing can be corrected and the only remedies left are makegoods and credits.

In OpenMediaLogic delivery is read against the plan as the campaign runs, which is the difference between moving next week's spots and writing off last month's. See also what agencies do with this and the buy side.