Microsoft Invest - Create an insertion order

Insertion orders enable you to better organize, track, and allocate budget to your line items. Associating your line items with insertion orders allows you to preserve historical pacing and performance data across line items under a single insertion order, and to streamline your setup for long-standing advertiser relationships.

For an overview of all buy-side objects, see the Object Hierarchy.

Create a new insertion order

1. Select the Create New button from the Insertion Orders menu, then select the appropriate advertiser.

   You can also search for the advertiser if necessary.

2. Fill out the basic setup, which includes information such as name and budget and billing details. For more information on these settings, see Basic Setup.

   1. Enter a name for the insertion order and optionally enter an external code and/or a billing code.

   2. Select a state.

      Tip

      To avoid spending before you're ready, set the state to "Inactive" until everything related to the buy has been set up and verified.

   3. Optionally, set a currency. If not set, the insertion order will inherit the advertiser's currency. You cannot change the currency after saving the insertion order.

      Tip

      As a best practice, align currency to the billing currency in order to achieve the best possible local currency experience. See Currency Support.

   4. Select a viewability standard.

   5. Select a budget type.

   6. Optionally, set up billing periods and pacing. For more information, see Billing Periods and Pacing.

   7. Optionally, enable political advertising on this insertion order and identify whether this advertising takes place on the federal or state or local level, or both. For more information, see Political Advertising.

      Note

      This option will only appear if you have already declared that this advertiser conducts political advertising on the advertiser.

3. Set the supply strategy, determining the inventory type and inventory lists for targeting. These settings can be further refined on the line item. For more information, see Inventory Lists.

   1. Select the inventory type: App & Web (the default), App Only (mobile inventory), or Web Only (standard websites and websites optimized for browsers on mobile devices).

   2. Select an allowlist, or create one directly from the insertion order. This determines the inventory that may be targeted by any line items belonging to this insertion order.

      Allowlists include the Microsoft Advertising Inventory List, a collection of inventory that Microsoft Advertising has selected based on demonstrated demand interest within our marketplace and vetted via additional quality controls (as well as platform inventory quality filtering).

   3. Select a blocklist, or create one directly from the insertion order. This determines which inventory will be excluded from targeting by line items belonging to this insertion order. The Microsoft Advertising blocklist is applied by default.

4. If this insertion order contains line items for political advertising, fill out the Political Advertising section.

5. Optionally, set caps for frequency (how many times a user may see ads for this insertion order) and recency (how much time must elapse before a user may see another ad for this insertion order). For more information, see Frequency and Recency Caps.

   Important

   Frequency caps can also be set at the advertiser, line item, and creative levels. The most restrictive setting always takes precedence.

6. Optionally, assign reporting labels. The labels (Trafficker, Sales Rep, and Insertion Order Type) will then appear in the Member Analytics Report. For more information, see Reporting Labels.

7. Optionally, associate existing augmented line items with the insertion order.

   Important

   Any budget or impressions that occurred before the line item was associated to the insertion order do not count towards the lifetime budget of the insertion order.

8. Optionally, add comments to the insertion order.

9. Select Save to save the insertion order. Alternatively, select the arrow next to Save and select Save and Create Line Item to go directly to creating a line item associated with this insertion order.

Basic setup

In the Basic Setup section, you enter basic information about the insertion order, such as its name and its budget and billing details. Settings are:

Name

The name for the insertion order. You will later be able to search for and report on the insertion order using this name.

External code (optional)

An external code used for reporting. (Microsoft Advertising also assigns an internal code automatically.) The code may only contain alphanumeric characters, periods underscores or dashes. It is not case-sensitive (upper- and lower-case characters are treated the same).

Billing code (optional)

An internal billing code you want to appear on invoices for this insertion order, if you receive insertion-order-specific invoices. For details on invoices, see Understanding Your Invoice.

State

The state of the insertion order. If "Active", child line items and campaigns will be eligible to serve.

Currency

If not set, the insertion order will inherit the advertiser's currency. You cannot change the currency after saving the insertion order.

Viewability standard

The viewability standard used for this insertion order. Defaults to IAB (Internal Advertising Bureau). For more information, see Introduction to Viewability.

Budget type

Determines whether the budget will be allocated by revenue (money) or by impression. All billing periods must have the same budget type.

Select a budget type:

• Revenue - use to associate only revenue-based line items to this insertion order.
• Impression - use to associate only impression-based line items to this insertion order.
• Flexible - use to associate both impression-based and revenue-based line items to this insertion order. All budgets must be set on the line item object when using the Flexible budget type.

Billing periods

Billing periods allow you to allocate portions of your marketing budget to discrete periods of time. You can associate an external code with a billing period for reporting and invoicing.

You can also set billing periods (or flight dates) on augmented line items, or copy the periods you have set on the insertion order to augmented line items already associated with the insertion order. Any line item flight dates must occur within the dates of the parent insertion order's billing periods.

• Dates

  You may set both a start and an end date (Set Dates) or set a start date without an end date (No Dates). If you select No End Date, you can only create a single billing period on the insertion order, but you may still specify multiple flights with end dates on the line item. If you select Set Dates, you can create up to 52 billing periods.

• Budgets

  You may set a budget for each billing period (Set Budgets) or not specify a budget (Unlimited Budget). If you do not specify a budget at the insertion order level, you can still specify budgets on the line item.

  Important

  • You cannot set a start date in the past.
  • Once you have saved an insertion order with Set Dates or No End Date, or Set Budget or Unlimited Budget, these settings cannot be changed.

Pacing

Pacing determines how quickly budget is spent over the lifetime of the insertion order.

Options are:

• Base daily allocation on average of remaining billing period budget- Automatically divide your remaining budget evenly across the remaining days in the billing period. Use the slider to adjust the percentage of the daily average allocation as necessary. This option is only available if the insertion order has both a billing period end date and a budget.

• Set pacing on the line item

  Warning

  If you select this option, be sure to set your budget pacing on the line item level. Otherwise, severe overspend can occur.

• Use daily budget- Set a custom daily budget to define your own pacing.

  Important

  You can set budgets at the line item level, but your insertion order budget takes precedence. When your insertion order budget runs out, all objects under the insertion order will stop buying impressions, whether or not they have reached their own budget limits.

Political advertising

Political organization details

This section contains the details of the person or organization that is purchasing ads on Microsoft Advertising. For example, a candidate, an agency, or a political consultant.

The required fields must be filled out for any state or local political advertising that will or could serve in California, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, or Washington, or for political advertising at the federal level that will or could serve in Washington State. If your political ad will not be served in any of those states, you may enter "N/A”. For more information on political advertising, see Political Advertising.

We reserve the right to implement additional screening at any time.

You must check I certify that all information provided herein is accurate and up to date, and acknowledge and agree that Microsoft Advertising is relying on the accuracy of this information. before you can save the insertion order.

Related topics

• View Insertion Order Details
• create-an-advertiser
• Create an Augmented Line Item
• Augmented Line Items (ALI)
• Buy-Side Targeting
• Basic Buy-side Setup Procedures
• Political Advertising