Reach forecasting

  • ReachPlanService enables media agencies and third-party media planning software companies to forecast the commercial reach of video campaigns on YouTube and Google Video Partners.

  • ReachPlanService is a private component of the Google Ads API available to allowlisted accounts only and requires contacting your Google representative for access.

  • To be eligible for ReachPlanService, partners must meet several conditions, including having a planning tool, using the API for media plans, and signing a data-licensing agreement.

  • Partners must complete a pre-screen assessment for each planning tool that will use the API.

  • Reach Planner within the Google Ads web interface contains many of the same features as ReachPlanService.

ReachPlanService enables media agencies and third-party media planning software companies to accurately forecast the commercial reach of video campaigns on YouTube and Google Video Partners. Media planners can use the service to answer questions such as:

  • How much investment on YouTube would it take to meet a campaign's reach goals?
  • How much of a target audience could a campaign reach for a given budget?
  • What is the optimal budget allocation between YouTube and other media channels if I have a campaign optimizing for reach?

Reach Planner, available from the Google Ads web interface, contains many of the same features.

Before you begin

Complete the Get started guide to ensure that you can connect to the Google Ads API before trying to connect to ReachPlanService.

This guide also assumes that you're familiar with Google Ads and media planning concepts.

Eligibility requirements

ReachPlanService is a private component of the Google Ads API offered with a non-exclusive, royalty-free data license. Signed partners can use the standard Google Ads client libraries to generate media plans. To be eligible, partners must satisfy the following conditions:

  • Have a planning tool or user interface that will integrate the API.
  • Use the API to produce media plans and estimate campaign reach and cost.
  • Complete a pre-screen assessment as outlined in the following section.
  • Follow data usage requirements and be willing to undergo periodic data audits.
  • Accept the Google Ads API terms of service and the associated data usage policy.

Contact your Google representative for more information. If you attempt to call ReachPlanService using a Google Cloud project that hasn't been added to the allowlist to use this service, the API returns an AuthorizationError.USER_PERMISSION_DENIED error.

Pre-screen assessment

Partners must complete a pre-screen assessment for each planning tool that would use the API. Google then assesses the data security, methodologies, and outputs of planning tools with questions such as:

  • How are users authenticated?
  • How is the usage of your tool tracked?
  • When building plans, which metrics can users optimize? For example: reach, impact, impressions, frequency.
  • How does your tool deduplicate channels?
  • Does your tool apply a default weight or effectiveness score to each channel in a plan?

Product mixes and surfaces

In the Google Ads API, a product mix represents a combination of ad formats and settings designed to achieve specific reach goals within a media plan. ReachPlanService provides granular control and reporting around surfaces, which are key components in defining a product mix.

Understand surfaces

Surfaces refer to the different environments where your ads can be shown, such as YouTube In-Stream, YouTube Shorts, and Google Video Partners. When planning, you can define product mixes based on specific surface offerings. The supported surface combinations for each product depend on your target location and currency, and are available through ListPlannableProducts in ReachPlanService.

Options for targeting

When constructing your product mix, you can also specify detailed targeting. See Audience targeting for details.

Generate a reach forecast

A typical reach forecasting workflow follows these steps:

  1. Get supported locations using ListPlannableLocations.
  2. Fetch available products and surfaces for a target location using ListPlannableProducts.
  3. Request reach estimates using GenerateReachForecast in ReachPlanService.

The forecast provides estimated reach and other metrics for your planned campaign. For details on the forecast output and product-specific considerations, see the Generate a reach curve guide. For definitions of metrics like reach and impressions, see the Glossary of terms.

What's next

  • Review the Concepts behind ReachPlanService.
  • Learn how to handle Authentication for the service.
  • View code examples for reach planning in your preferred client library language.
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Concepts