Publishers will respond to your requests for proposal (RFPs) by offering inventory. Any inventory they share with you will appear in the Negotiation page of your project in the menu bar and can be included in your project's plan. However, you can also negotiate with a publisher before you add their inventory to your plan.
View inventory available for negotiation
Use the Negotiation page of your project to make counteroffers to the inventory a publisher (or other inventory provider) has offered you.
A negotiation channel is created between you and a publisher as soon as you send an RFP to the publisher. Once an RFP has been sent, you can see each publisher's inventory grouped by negotiation channel within the Negotiation page. This channel shows the status of the discussion between two parties after the initial RFP. Learn more about negotiation channels.
Note: You can have multiple negotiation channels open at the same time with a single inventory provider. For example:
- You might send RFPs to different parts of a business when a publisher is an umbrella for multiple brands who all maintain their own sales teams. In this case, you can have a negotiation channel for each brand.
- You may have multiple media planners working within the same project and each media planner would like to segregate their negotiations with the same publisher. In this case, each media planner can have their own distinct negotiation channel.
- You may have a long-running media plan and would like to segregate your Q1 and Q2 negotiations with the same publisher. In this case, you can have a negotiation channel for each quarter.
Change your offer and share with the publisher
Planning makes it easy to compare your offer to the publisher’s and to change your offer and make it available to the publisher.
- Click Negotiation in the menu bar.
- Choose 1-line view to see just your values, or 2-line view to compare them to the publisher’s. The publisher’s line will always be the 2nd line. You can edit your own information in the first line, but not the publisher’s in the second line. The line you cannot edit will also be greyed out.
- Change values in the column(s) you want to change.
- Click Share to share your edits with the publisher through the negotiation channel. This will also make them available to other members of your team.
The publisher will receive an email notification that you have changed one or more fields in your negotiation.
You will receive a notification when a publisher changes any item in a negotiation. These notifications are enabled by default. To turn them off, click the name of a negotiation channel. In the channel’s pane, deselect the box next to “Notify me when the other party shares this negotiation”, and click Save.
Note: If you are taking over the negotiation from the original user at your agency, you must opt in to receive notifications. To turn notifications on, click the name of a negotiation channel. In the channel’s pane, select the box next to “Notify me when the other party shares this negotiation”, and click Save.
What do the dots and colored cells mean?
The Negotiation view uses dots and blue and green cells as visual cues to alert you to differences between versions of items shared between the agency and publisher, as follows:
- A dot to the left of an item indicates that there’s a difference between versions of a shared item. Move the mouse over the dot to see a message about the difference.
- Blue background in a cell indicates that a difference exists between the versions of items shared between the agency and publisher.
- Green background in a cell indicates that you’ve made a change to the item’s value in the cell that you haven’t yet shared. The negotiation row that contains the changed placement also turns green.
To share your changes, click the Share button. A drop-down menu appears, showing all Negotiation channels that include the item. Click the channel(s) with a green dot to share the changes.
Note: If an item contains both new and previously existing unshared changes, the message that appears when you move the mouse over it is associated with the change you just made, but haven’t yet shared.
Share documents in negotiation channels
Similar to RFP attachments, you can attach documents directly to a negotiation channel. Either party can add documents to the negotiation channel document library, and the other party can download it from there.
The document library appears as a new section in a negotiation channel properties pane. You can add, remove, and rename files you upload. As with other fields in the properties panes, you must click Save to make the change visible. To add a document to a negotiation channel, follow these steps:
- Start in the Negotiation page in Planning.
- Click the name of a negotiation channel.
- In the pane that opens on the right, click Add under Documents. Use the menu to select one or more more files from your computer.
- Click Save. The files will now be available to the publisher.
Assign selected placements
Click the Assign to… button to assign one or more placements to an execution channel or order.
Accept publisher changes
Click the “Accept” drop-down menu. Click the name of a negotiation channel with a blue dot next to it to accept all changes to that channel.