Ad Flight

Detailed explanation

In media buying, the “flight” of a campaign is its run window — the start date and end date agreed in the insertion order or set in the platform's campaign settings. A single campaign can have one continuous flight or several separate flights, for example a retailer running the same creative during two different promotional weeks.

Flight dates matter beyond simple scheduling: budget pacing, frequency capping, and reporting periods are all built around them, and comparing performance across campaigns only makes sense once you account for differences in flight length and seasonality. A two-week flight during a holiday period and a two-week flight in a slow month are not comparable without adjusting for demand.

For “what is ad flight” or “how to plan a campaign flight” searches, this entry is a starting point. See Frequency Capping for how exposure is managed within a flight, and Ad Spending for how budget is paced across it.