Tags decide which campaigns are eligible to play in which marker; the waterfall lets a higher-priority "tier" fall back to a lower one when there's no booked campaign at the top.
What a tag is
A tag is a label you attach to:
- Markers on episodes - to say "this slot can play campaigns of this type".
- Campaigns - to say "this campaign targets this type of slot".
Tags are workspace-scoped (your tag library is private to your workspace).
Every tag has:
- A name ("Premium", "Standard", "House").
- A priority - an integer that ranks tags within the workspace. Higher number = higher priority.
- An optional fallback tag - what to try when no campaign matches this tag.
Tag priority must be unique within your workspace. If you try to save two tags with the same priority, you'll get a validation error.
The waterfall
The waterfall is the fallback chain you build by setting each tag's "Falls back to" field. A typical setup:
Premium (priority 10) → Standard (priority 7) → House (priority 3) → (end)
When Springcast assembles an episode and reaches a marker tagged Premium, it asks:
- Is there an active campaign tagged Premium that passes all filters (window, frequency cap, geo, etc.)?
- If yes → play it.
- If no → try the fallback: is there an active campaign tagged Standard?
- If no → try the next fallback: is there an active campaign tagged House?
- If still no → the marker stays empty for this listener.
This is what lets you sell premium inventory while still filling unsold slots with house ads instead of dead air.
Strict tag - when to use it
By default, a campaign happily plays via the waterfall. But sometimes that's not what you want. Example:
You sold the advertiser "Bol.com" a "Standard" tier campaign. They pay for Standard inventory only. If Premium's chain falls through to Standard, Bol.com's campaign becomes eligible - even on Premium-tagged markers. That's giving them Premium inventory at the Standard price.
To prevent that, edit the Bol.com campaign and turn on Strict tag. Now the campaign only plays on markers tagged exactly Standard (never as a fallback from Premium).
Strict tag is a per-campaign setting, not a per-tag one. Two campaigns on the same Standard tag can have different strict-tag settings.
In the campaign list, a campaign with strict-tag on shows a small STRICT chip next to the tag column. Hover for a tooltip explanation.
Markers with multiple tags
You can attach more than one tag to the same marker - useful when a single slot can play either a Premium booking or a Standard one. Springcast walks the tags in priority order, highest first. The highest-priority tag tries its full waterfall before any lower-priority tag is considered.
Concrete example. A marker is tagged [Standard, Premium] (operator added both). Two campaigns are active:
- Campaign A tagged
Premium- short asset, 30 seconds - Campaign B tagged
Standard- long asset, 2 minutes
Springcast starts with Premium (priority 10): Campaign A is eligible → plays. Campaign B is never even considered for this marker, because Premium found its match first.
Now imagine you pause Campaign A. Same marker, next download:
- Premium is tried first → Campaign A is paused, no Premium match → fall to Premium's fallback (Standard) → Campaign B is eligible → plays.
The "right" thing happens automatically.
Tip: if Premium's fallback chain already includes Standard, adding Standard as a separate marker tag is redundant - the resolver dedupes the work. Operators sometimes do this anyway as a "safety belt"; it doesn't hurt but it also doesn't help.
Show settings - defaults across all episodes
Setting markers on every episode by hand is a chore. The Show settings page lets you configure per-show defaults:
- Default pre-roll - for every new episode, automatically place a pre-roll marker with these tags.
- Default post-roll - same for post-roll.
- Mid-roll defaults - define slots (slot 1, slot 2, …) that the bulk "Apply mid-roll defaults" action will write onto the Kth mid-roll marker (by timestamp) of every selected episode.
The tag pickers in Show settings sort their chips by priority desc - so the leftmost chip is the one that fires first via the waterfall, giving you a quick visual sanity check.
Important: Show settings configures defaults for future episodes and templates for the bulk Apply action. Toggling defaults off does not retroactively remove markers from existing episodes. Use the bulk actions on the Shows page for that (Apply / Remove / Reset).
Worked scenario: a small ad network
Imagine you sell three tiers:
- Premium (priority 10) - €10 CPM, sold per quarter, limited stock.
- Standard (priority 7) - €4 CPM, runs continuously.
- House (priority 3) - your own podcast promos, always-on.
Tag setup:
- Premium → fallback to Standard
- Standard → fallback to House
- House → no fallback
Every marker on every episode gets tagged with Premium only.
What happens:
- Listeners get a Premium ad when a Premium campaign is active (high revenue).
- When the Premium campaign sells out for the day (frequency cap or impression target), or there's no Premium booked for that quarter, the waterfall falls through to Standard - Premium revenue with a Standard fallback floor.
- When Standard is also empty, House kicks in. No dead air.
You only ever tag markers as Premium. The waterfall does the rest.
Common pitfalls
- Setting Strict on the top tag of a waterfall - strict-tag only matters at fallback depth. Setting it on Premium (which is already the top) does nothing visible.
- Forgetting that priority must be unique - if you try to add a new tag at priority 10 when one already exists, the save fails. Edit the existing tag's priority first.
- Building a long waterfall with no House fallback - markers can end up empty. Always have a "guaranteed-fill" tag at the bottom (often a House tag pinned to a free always-running campaign).
- Multiple tags on a marker confusing operators - usually a single tag plus a fallback chain is clearer than two parallel tags. Reach for multi-tag markers only when the two tags genuinely live on different waterfalls.
- Renaming a tag mid-campaign - the campaign's tag link is by ID, not name. Renaming is safe; the campaign keeps working. But your operators may be confused if the chip in the campaign list suddenly says something different. Communicate the rename.