Flighting Planner — Split a Campaign Budget Across Months
A flighting plan spreads a campaign budget across the months it runs, deciding which periods are in market, which are dark, and how much weight each active month carries. This free tool takes a total budget and a date range and returns a month-by-month spend schedule you can drop straight into a media plan.
The four patterns
- Even — the budget divided equally across every in-market month. The right default when demand is flat and there is no seasonal signal to chase.
- Front-loaded — weight in the opening months. Use it when awareness has to exist before demand arrives: launches, and seasonal peaks where the decision forms weeks before the purchase.
- Back-loaded — weight at the end. Use it when conversion happens inside a fixed window, such as a holiday retail push or a deadline-driven signup drive.
- Pulsed — a low always-on base with bursts layered on top. It keeps a brand present between pushes without paying for continuous heavy weight.
How to read the output
The planner returns each month's spend, its share of the total, and the running cumulative spend. Two checks matter before you sign off. First, does every active month clear the minimum weight needed to reach enough people often enough to be remembered? Spreading a small budget thinly across many months and channels is the most common way a plan quietly fails. Second, do the heavy months line up with when your customer is actually deciding — not merely when the campaign is convenient to run?
Flighting inside a full media plan
Flighting is one of the last decisions in a plan and one of the first things a client questions, because it is where strategy becomes a calendar. In MediaPlan the same schedule feeds the blocking chart and the exported plan, so the months you set here carry through to the budget table, the flowchart, and the client-ready deck. Our guide to building a media plan in 2026 covers where flighting sits in the wider process.
Frequently asked questions
What is flighting in media planning?
Flighting is how a campaign budget is distributed over time — which months or weeks are in market, which are dark, and how much weight each active period carries. A continuous schedule spends steadily all year; a flighted schedule concentrates spend into bursts with gaps between them; a pulsed schedule keeps a low base level always on and layers bursts on top of it.
How do you split a budget across flight months?
Start from the objective and the seasonal shape of demand, not from the calendar. Divide the total budget across the in-market months, weight the months that matter — a launch, a promotional window, a seasonal peak — and check that every active month still clears the minimum spend needed to hit an effective frequency. A month with a token budget spread across four channels usually reaches nobody often enough to count.
Should you front-load or back-load a campaign?
Front-load when awareness has to be built before demand arrives — product launches and seasonal peaks where the purchase decision forms weeks ahead. Back-load when conversion happens in a fixed window, such as a holiday retail push or a registration deadline. Even flighting is the safe default when demand is flat and you have no strong seasonal signal.