Introduction to predicting a new activity

To initiate a new prediction for a campaign/activity, you first have to provide some key inputs to be taken into account when running the prediction.

To open the new prediction input area you can click on the "+ PREDICT" button in the top menu.

You are then taken to the prediction input area where you submit key information about your activity/campaign before eventually initiating the prediction:

The inputs you need to provide for your new prediction are:

• Activity period: the period where you want to run your campaign/activity (E.g. March 1st 20XX to April 30th 20XX). When running the prediction, HamiltonAI will only optimize your media investments, within the period you select.

• Optimization method: here you can select one of two ways of how Hamilton should optimize your campaign/activity
  • Investment optimization: you have a set budget, and want HamiltonAI to predict which volume of sales you can potentially generate from that budget, and how
  • Target optimization: you have a media sales target (a target only for what your media should generate of sales, not your total company sales or similar), and you want HamiltonAI to predict what investment level and mix is needed to generate that sales target

• Media investment / Target: depending on whether you chose the investment- or target optimization, you input either your total media investment for the campaign here or your total sales target for the campaign

• Constraints: under constraints, you have the option of constraining certain investment levels for certain media channels and/or media publishers. Say for instance, that you are making a prediction for a campaign period, for which you already have some TV investment booked. You can then add that booking as a media constraint, for HamiltonAI to take into consideration, that this is a mandatory spend (unchangeable), for the final investment recommendation generated. Or let's say you work with media commitments, where you have to invest specific amounts with specific media vendors. You can then add those required investment levels as constraints
  • Media constraints can be either "Min." (the prediction should include min. this investment level), "Max." (the prediction should include max. this investment level) and "Fixed" (the prediction must allocate exactly this investment level)
  • Media constraints can be applied to the whole campaign period or only to a part of the campaign period
  • Media constraints can be applied at both channel level (TV, Outdoor, Display, etc.) and publisher level (SAT1, Clear Channel, Facebook.com)

Once you have entered all relevant informations for your campaign/activity, you click "Predict" to start HamiltonAI calculating your prediction results. This can take anywhere from minuttes and up to hours, depending on complexity of inputs.

Note: if you select target based optimization, your prediction run-time increases significantly compared to investment based optimizations. And the longer the campaign period selected and the more media constraints you add, the longer the prediction run-time will be