This article describes the campaign and ad group creation flow. This is tvScientific's wizard to help you launch your campaign quickly and easily. You will first create a campaign, then be guided to set up one or more ad groups, and finally launch the campaign if you're ready (or save it as a draft).

All your campaigns (be they active, pending, paused, or drafts) live in the Campaigns tab, and you can revisit them at any time to make changes. All the things you can do to existing campaigns and ad groups are described in great detail in Campaigns Tab: Manage Campaigns and Ad Groups. This article focuses on the wizard's flow, and links often to the detailed article.

You may recall from setting up your new tvScientific account that a tvScientific organization has one or more ad accounts; and an ad account has one or more campaigns. A campaign, in turn, has one or more ad groups. Refer to the Campaigns Tab: Manage Campaigns and Ad Groups article for a detailed distinctions. In this flow you will create a campaign and one or more ad groups.

There are two ways you may find yourself creating a campaign:

The campaign creation flow takes you through all the steps of creating a campaign to launching it. These include creating one or more ad groups, uploading one or more creatives, and setting up tracking URLs.

The information you enter in the course of this flow can always be edited later in the Campaigns tab by selecting the campaign or ad group, and making changes where needed. You can pause your setup progress by clicking Save and Exit at any time. Your campaign is saved as a draft, which you can later access from the Campaigns tab and continue editing. Learn more about managing existing campaigns here.

You can track your campaign creation progress in the left panel. If you create a campaign with two ad groups (a regular OTT CTV one and a retargeting ad group), your navigation will look like this. There is a card for each component (the campaign and each of the two ad groups), which you can click to make changes to that component.

The last card is the Review and Launch step, where you can review, choose to make changes, launch your campaign, or decide to save it as a draft. Note that when you reach the Review and Launch step after having defined your campaign, if you haven't yet provided a payment method, you can only save the campaign as a draft. A payment method is required before your campaign can serve any ads.

As you follow the campaign and ad group creation flow that we describe in this article, refer to the Campaigns Tab: Manage Campaigns and Ad Groups article for detailed instructions. Every element we discuss below is linked to a more detailed description.

tvScientific provides usable default values for most fields to help you launch as quickly as possible if desired. At the campaign level, the only required value you must specify yourself is the budget.

Begin by specifying campaign basics: name (defaults to a name comprised of the current date and time, but we recommend giving your campaign a meaningful name that describes your strategy); budget (no default; you must specify a budget); and time window (defaults to start at the current date and time, and to end on the last day of the following month).

Decide whether to retarget the exposed audience with display ads as a way to build frequency with your target audience. This setting defaults to no; you must toggle it on to retarget.

Scroll down to select a campaign objective (defaults to Website Sales--encourage users to visit your website and make a purchase).

Optionally peruse advanced campaign delivery options, which include:

These advanced options all default to no, so to apply them, you must toggle them on and specify parameters.

You have completed the campaign-level settings and are ready to create the campaign's first ad group. Click Next: Ad Group 1.

Your first ad group for the campaign is a regular CTV OTT ad group. If in Step 1 you decided to retarget the campaign audience, the campaign creation flow will guide you to add a retargeting ad group next; if you did not opt to retarget, the campaign can be complete and launched after one ad group, unless you opt to create additional ad groups regardless. tvScientific provides usable default values for most fields to help you launch as quickly as possible if desired. At the ad group level, the only required specifics you must enter are ad group budget, bid strategy, and creative.

Begin by entering an Ad Group Name. We recommend a meaningful name that describes your strategy, but you can accept the default, which describes it by creation time.

Enter the ad group budget (this is required; tvScientific does not provide a default budget) and time window (defaults to start at the current date and time, and to end on the last day of the following month).

You must select a bid strategy for your ad group; tvScientific does not provide a default. Each of the bid strategies allows you to enter a Max CPM Bid (this is optional for all strategies and defaults to none; except the Manual Bid strategy, which requires a max CPM bid).

Optionally specify advanced ad group delivery options:

Optionally specify geographical regions to target with your ads. If you choose to scroll past, the entire United States is targeted by default. For new campaigns, we recommend casting a large net. Once you learn more about the campaign's performance, you can refine your audience.

Optionally describe your target audience in terms of demographics: gender, age group, and household income bracket, behaviors and interests, and other descriptors. Without your specifications, tvScientific defaults to all genders, all ages, and all incomes.

You may further refine your targeted audience with advanced options.

Select the inventory to which your ads will be delivered. We recommend our Maximum Reach package for a new campaign, to start with a broader audience. If no selection is made, tvScientific defaults to Maximum Reach.

Optionally specify device type and OS targeting to show or block your ads on selected devices and/or operating systems, but note that this can limit your scale.

The creative is the ad itself. Creatives for OTT CTV ads are MP4 or MOV video files. Refer to our Creative Technical Specifications article for more detailed technical requirements. Consider the content and style recommendations in our Creative Best Practices article for optimal performance.

Click Add Creative and follow these instructions to assign one or more creatives to this ad group. You can upload a creative file from your computer, or by providing the VAST Tag. If you have already uploaded creatives to this organization, you can select an existing creative assigned to this campaign from the Media Library.

If you don't add a tracking pixel, you will still be able to complete setting up the ad group and launch the campaign. But implementing pixel tracking is a most important step to ensure that your CTV campaign has performance-level reporting. tvScientific provides impression reporting without pixel tracking, but to associate impressions with events like a website visit, or purchase, or an app install, pixel tracking is required.

If you decide to skip this step for now, remember that you will need to implement pixels for meaningful tvScientific reporting and attribution. Manage pixel tracking in the Tracking tab.

After you save one or more creatives, their thumbnails display under the Creative category. Be sure to click Next to save the ad group.

After you have defined your campaign and first ad group, you have four options:

If you have enabled retargeting, the campaign creation flow automatically guides you to create a second ad group for retargeting after you've created a regular (OTT CTV) ad group. The Display Retargeting ad group will show display ads to visitors who have already been exposed to your OTT CTV ad as a way to build frequency with your target audience. Because the audience for this ad group is already a subset of the campaign's audience, be wary of sub-targeting it too narrowly.

Select a bid strategy for the retargeting ad group. Setting a Max CPM Bid is important in a retargeting campaign.

Scrolling down, you arrive at targeting within the retargeting group, which, like regular OTT CTV ad groups, is broken down by geography, audience, and inventory. However, your retargeting audience may already be limited, so be cautious about further restricting the audience.

Optionally restrict the geography for the retargeting group.

You can further restrict your target audience within the retargeting group in terms of demographics: gender, age group, and household income bracket, behaviors and interests, and other descriptors.

Note that the Demo Campaign campaign is automatically listed for the retargeting group; this means that the advanced audience consists of households who have been shown an ad from the Demo Campaign campaign.

The retargeting inventory automatically defaults to Premium Display inventory.

Click Add Display Creative. The creatives for your retargeting display ads must be still images: PNG or JPEG.

Follow the instructions here to select a display creative, then click Next: Manage Creative.

Complete your display creative setup and click Save Creative. You have completed your second ad group (retargeting)!

Now that you have defined your campaign, one or more OTT CTV ad groups, and an optional retargeting ad group, you have two options, both described in Step 4:

The Review and Launch page lists all the choices you have made for your campaign and each ad group. Under each set of choices, there is a link to edit them if you want to make changes.

If all the required information has been provided and you have already provided a payment method, the Launch Campaign option is enabled. Click it to start serving ads!

You are done, and if you navigate to the Campaigns tab, your campaign will be listed, and you can edit it from there. Once it starts serving ads, you will also be able to monitor its impressions from the Campaigns tab.

If the campaign or one of its ad groups is missing a required element, you can only save your work as a draft. At this point, click a link under a group of settings to edit one of the settings, or click Save as Draft.

Your campaign will be listed with a status of 'Draft' in the Campaigns tab until you are ready to complete its setup.