CM360 Tips: What Happened to the Planning Tool?

Have you come across this error message when trying to access the Planning tool within CM360?

If the deprecation of the CM360 Planning tool has affected your campaigns or workflows and you’re looking for a replacement, this blog can point you in the right direction! Let’s hop right in!

About the Planning Tool

The Planning Tool was a feature within Campaign Manager that allowed you to set up placements in a mock campaign to help you organize your strategy beforehand. This helped to establish a media buying plan that made the most sense for a client’s campaign. The planning tool also allowed for bulk trafficking and making changes to placements in bulk.

Planning Tool Deprecation 

Google switched the planning tool to “read-only mode” in February 2023 and fully deprecated it as of April 30th.

Luckily, there are some workarounds with similar capabilities that you can use!

Did You Use the Planning Tool for Bulk Trafficking?

If you were previously using CM360’s Planning tool for the bulk trafficking component, we recommend using bulk upload or the Campaign Manager API moving forward:

1. Bulk Spreadsheet -  Campaign Manager allows you to export your campaign into a spreadsheet. This allows you to make bulk campaign changes more quickly than the CM360 user interface!
   
   Go into your campaign and click on “Export” in the top right corner:

This will generate an excel file which will automatically download:

Upon opening this spreadsheet, you will see several rows and columns containing campaign information. Information about the existing placements, packages, and roadblocks can then be edited. The campaign spreadsheet can also help you add new placements, packages, and roadblocks.

Please note that the spreadsheet can not be used to unassign existing placements, creatives, or ads from a campaign.

Once the desired changes have been made and the spreadsheet is saved, it can then be imported back into Campaign Manager:

After processing, you will receive an email notification and any changes you’ve made to placements, ads or creatives in the spreadsheet will appear in the Campaign Manager 360 user interface!

This article details even more information on how to use the Campaign Spreadsheet!

2. CM360 API - The CM360 API acts as a communicator between third-party programs/applications and CM360 while also retrieving data from CM360 campaigns for reporting purposes. Using the CM360 API, it is also possible for you to create advertisers, campaigns, ads, placements, and creatives, as well as upload assets!
   
   The CM360 API gives you the option to do bulk trafficking from a third-party application.
   To read more about trafficking capabilities with CM360 API and how to program it, this article is a great resource!

Please note that you will need to ensure that API Access is granted at the Account level by sending a request to Adswerve Support.

Did You Use the Planning Tool for Media Planning and Budgeting?

If you were previously using CM360’s Planning tool for budgeting and media planning purposes, there are alternatives for this too!  Google recommends reaching out to MediaOcean/Prisma or Hudson MX to ask about their media planning capabilities.

At Adswerve, we offer a range of services to help you harness the power of CM360. Reach out to learn how we can help you optimize workflows and stay ahead of the competition.