SoCast Activity Streams are used to connect and engage your audience, while creating opportunities for your brand or sponsors to engage with their potential customers through Ad Sync posts. Ad Sync posts allow you to synchronize your on-air message with visual ads to a wider audience to drive more engagement with your brand or sponsors content.

When an on-air ad is broadcasted, the SoCast Platform will be notified.  If a matching visual ad is configured in the SoCast Platform, this ad will be delivered and displayed within the mobile app in near real time. After the Ad-Sync ad is displayed it will continue to show up in your activity stream as a regular promo post.

Ad Sync posts appear in activity streams on the mobile app. Only users with the 'Manage Activity Stream Promo Posts' permission will be able to access this feature.

Example:

Step-by-step guide

1. Go to: Website > Activity Stream Promo Posts
   
2. Click ' Add Item '
   
   
   
   
3. Title : Add a title.
   Title is a required field
   Title will be visible to users in the Promo post.
   
   
   
4. Description : Add a message/description to accompany your promo post/ad.
   Description is a required field, and can be a maximum of 255 characters
   Description will be visible to users in the Promo post.
   
   
   
   
5. Image : Upload an image from your computer . Format must be either JPG, PNG, or GIF and has a recommended 1080px width .
   Any image height can be used without the image being distorted.
   
   
   
   
6. URL : Add a URL if you wish to direct users to somewhere specific.
   The URL will click through to the advertisers site.
   
7. Start Date : Select a start date for when you want the promo item to appear
   
   
8. End Date : Select an end date for when you want the promo item to end
   
   
9. Delivery Method: You have a number of ways you can choose to have the ad deliver:
   
   
   
   By Frequency doesn't have the post show up when an ad plays, but will simply display based on the weighting you give it by entering the weight:
   
   
   By On Air Sync will have the ad display only if the commercial plays. You set this up by setting up the cut ID and maximum views below:
   
   If you want to limit the number of times the ad is viewed, you can enter this in the Maximum Views field. Otherwise, leaving this field blank will make the max number of views unlimited.
   
   By Both combines the two methods mentioned above, so you set a weighting for the ad to display in the activity stream and a Cut ID for it to display when the commercial plays.

Editing or Deleting a Post:

1. To edit a promo post click on the ' pencil ' icon beside your promo
2. To delete a promo post click on the ' X ' icon beside your promo
   
   
   
   

Why isn't my Post Showing?

Check that it's marked as Active:

If your post has an end date that is set before the current date, the post will move from Active to Expired. To view or edit the post, simply click on the 'Expired' tab to see all posts that have expired.

Check the Weighting:

If there are multiple ads, some with a weighting of 50, and others with a weighting of 1, the ads that have a weighting of 1 have an extremely unlikely chance of showing up (around 1% if the total weighting values add up to 100, more if that total is over 100).

Check the Ad Type:

If you were looking for the ad-sync ad to show up when an audio ad is played, ensure that it was set up as an ad-sync ad, and not as a promo post.

Check the logs:

If the ad still isn't showing up despite it being set up correctly, please talk to your station's technical lead who can provide logs of what your station's playlist feed is and determine the following:

• Does the CUT ID match what was sent through your playlist?
• Does the Ad Category that was sent match what you set up in the playlist settings?