Note: You need to have ad markers in your podcast episodes and historical downloads to forecast your ad impressions inventory. Put another way, if you simply have downloads of episodes with no ad markers, there is no historical data to use to calculate the future available impressions.

The OCM Forecasting tool allows you to forecast how much estimated inventory (how many ad slots) you have available based on historical and missed impressions. You can then click a button to create a pre-filled flight based on your forecast report!

1) To setup a forecasting report you first just need to head to the forecasting menu on the left: 

2) Select the date range (in the future), the placement (pre, mid or post) and the location rules. Here's an example configuration:

You don't need to setup a location rule - by default, the report will run on all locations.

3) Hit 'Generate forecast report' and your report will be displayed below. 

Available impressions is an estimate of how many impressions are available to be filled without contention.

Contending impressions are impressions that have already been booked in other flights for the configured parameters.

Forecasted impressions is an estimate of the total forecasted impressions (contending and available)

If you'd like to create a pre-filled flight based on the report configuration, simply hit 'create flight to fill impressions'

Underneath the main report, you will also get a list of flights (and links to those flights) which are currently booked for the configured date range. This way, you can double-check there are no significant conflicts and adjust things accordingly if required.