View top inventory insights with traffic explorer

Traffic Explorer helps publishers develop an understanding of their inventory and first-party data capabilities. #firstpartydata

About traffic explorer

Traffic Explorer helps you examine specific data with a consolidated view. It gives instant insight about first-party data from your inventory. You can also compare sections of your inventory for improved campaign insight.

The high-level scorecards break down top geography, line item, ad units and more, by exploring certain targeting scenarios to filter inventory segments.

With traffic explorer, you can:

• Use a given set of targeting dimensions to build more detailed inventory insight (device, geography, platform, browser, ad unit, line item, key-value, and more listed below)
• View scorecards for an overview of audience segment reach, including ad opportunities and unique identifiers
• View explorer cards to see multiple insight cards, showing unique identifier forecasts and various breakdowns across dimensions

Access traffic explorer

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Inventory  Traffic explorer.
3. Click Edit targeting to explore traffic data. This filters to the segment of inventory you’re interested in.
4. Add the targeting preset and click Done.

You can also access traffic explorer through the targeting picker. 

1. In Google Ad Manager, click Delivery  Line items.
2. Select a line item.
3. In the "Add targeting" section, use the drop-down to select your desired targeting, and add any sub-targets you want to filter by.
4. Click Save  click Explorer traffic data. The targeting expression will be copied over.

(Optional) To compare the currently selected inventory with another one, click Add Comparison Targeting and type the name of the segment you’d like to compare.

"Last 30 days unique identifiers" allow you to see the number of unique identifiers exposed to your ad requests over a given duration. It’s useful to estimate how many people saw your ad. "Last 30 days ad opportunities" show how many times it was possible to deliver an impression.

From the metric tab, you can select between Unique identifiers and Ad opportunities. The scorecards update based on your selection.

View scorecards

View more details about your inventory using these scorecards.

	Traffic forecast Gives historical traffic along with future impression opportunities for a selected inventory, and sell-through rates. Click View in traffic forecast for more tools to analyze past and future impressions.
	Top geography   The top regions where users in this audience segment are located when visiting your site. Click into a country’s bar to see more granular data at the state or region level.
	Top devices   Devices where the most ad opportunities or unique identifiers were served
	Top browsers The top browsers that users in this selected inventory are visiting your site from
	Top platforms Platforms with the most ad opportunities or unique identifiers served
	Top ad units Your ad units with the most ad opportunities or unique identifiers served
	Top line items Your line items with the most ad opportunities or unique identifiers served
	Top video content Your top video content with the most unique identifiers or ad opportunities served. Note that the data shown here represents an estimate based on traffic sampled over the last 30 days, so the figures might not be exact.
	Top content bundles Your video content bundles with the most unique identifiers or ad opportunities served. Note that the data shown here represents an estimate based on traffic sampled over the last 30 days, so the figures might not be exact.
	Top key values Shows the top targeting values of a selected key

 

Use cases for Traffic Explorer

Respond to RFPs/buyer interest

To provide data to buyers that shows the value of running a campaign based on their particular needs, you can filter down to the inventory of interest in Traffic Explorer.

Identical Audience Explorer functionality for publishers using key-values instead of audience

Publishers using key-values to leverage audience data can use Traffic Explorer to understand the nature of your audience by filtering down to the key-value that represents your audience.

General learning and first-party data development

Traffic Explorer could show you, for example, users on your sports inventory visiting from Canada tend to also be in your Movie Fan and Non-Fiction Enthusiast audience segments. Running ads on your sports inventory may actually be a good place to reach these users.

Build audience segments

Use Traffic Explorer as inspiration to build a new audience segment if visitors to a specific segment of your inventory exhibit some behavior of interest.

Troubleshooting

When there is an unexpected change in inventory, Traffic Explorer can be used to quickly analyze the situation.

Share data summary with executives

Traffic Explorer’s visual representation makes it easy to share snapshots of trends and performance with others in your business who may not be in the tool on a day-to-day basis.