I assume that you already have a media plan from the media house. So, what to do to let the digital campaign go live? In the following article, I will share with you some practical tips that can help you in the production of your next banner campaign.

1: WHAT you should prepare

The keyword is the specification. OK, this can cause an eyelid to shake, but in fact, this devil is not so devious. Especially if your team has someone who will stand between the design and technical requirements. And I assume that’s you!

With the media plan in front of you, carefully study the technical guidelines of each format. This will help you know how many formats you need to prepare, how much time you will need and – just as important – how to prepare them.

Take a good look at the non-standard formats. Often, when you look into the details, you will find that instead of the one you should prepare several banners (or one that consists of couple elements). It could mean that you’ll need more time to produce it.

If you do it, you avoid the situation when, after sending the files to the media house, it turns out that some materials are missing or are not prepared according to the technical specs. Mistakes can happen (especially with the non-standard formats), but the fewer of them the better. It’s then much easier to fix them on time and your digital campaign will start as planned.

2: WHEN you need to get it done

The keyword is deadline. Typically, in the media plan, you will find the emission date (it’s when the campaign and the individual ads go live) and the date of delivery of materials to the media house. 

The emission date means the date when the format will be displayed online. Depending on the campaign, all ads from the media plan can start at the same time or have different emission dates. For example, remarketing campaigns usually start with a delay, so there is time to collect a remarketing data.

Usually, the date of materials delivery will be a few days before the emission date of the given format (the media house needs time to accept, check and traffic your ads).

Remember that we’re living in the digital campaign world, so most often everything is overdue. That’s why good prioritization is your savior – simply prioritize production taking into account the dates and types of emissions.

Each digital campaign requires a good schedule of work, so the media house will get everything on time. It is your responsibility to remember to set up a time backup for your customer feedback for the first versions of materials, as well as for the preparation of the production files, based on the tech specs.

The media house will be able to accept small delays if the formats are broadcasted for many days or weeks (of course, the media house should be informed earlier about the delays).

In the case of FF (Flat Fee) emissions – shift in time is not an option or can be very problematic. These emissions are planned in advance for a specific day. If there are no materials, then the emission will be lost. It’s like being late for a plane!

3: HOW to prepare materials

The keyword is optimization (and quality assurance). Once you start working on the campaign, it is a good practice to plan the next stages of production of materials in order to manage your time, contractors and clients as optimally as possible. 

Doing everything at once usually misses the goal, because it causes chaos, changes and corrections on many materials at the same time and a lot of frustration due to wasted time.

It is optimal to first prepare the so-called „master”, which is the main material on the basis of which more will be prepared. When the “master” is approved by your client, you can expect comments that apply to a specific format, and not to an overall look and feel of the ads.

In addition to the main „master”, it is worth to prepare its variations in the next stage to accept various layouts (vertical, level, square, etc.) or other creative lines.

Thanks to this the client will see how the content is distributed on a given material and, hopefully, accept it 🙂 We will be able to create more materials with greater certainty, which are more similar to those accepted (without the risk that suddenly the whole work will be turned upside down).

Remember that you can create campaign materials with several teammates at the same time. All you need to do is assign the work cleverly. First of all, group similar formats and assigned them to one person. Secondly: have an accepted master, so that individual formats are based on proven materials. Thanks to this, you can optimize time and costs.

The worst thing you can do is design and then implement something that at the final stage (after sending it to the publisher) turns out to be against the technical guidelines…

Once again, it is very important to check at every possible stage whether what we do is in line with the guidelines from the media plan. If we catch any errors soon enough, it will be more possible to fix them.

Time for production files

After preparing and accepting the materials with the client, they should be sorted and prepared in accordance with the media plan and specifications and sent to the media house. This is the perfect moment to do a „double-check” of the correctness and compliance of the prepared materials with the publishers’ guidelines.

The basic guidelines are maximum file weight, dimensions, clickTag and time duration (in the case of an animation), and in the case of non-standard formats – consistency with the template (if it was provided by the publisher). In addition, it is worth checking whether the prepared files do not differ visually from those accepted by the customer.

In some cases, a media house requires that you send materials that already uploaded to a Sizmek or Google Studio platform. This is, of course, an additional time and tasks that must be taken into account when planning your work on the digital campaign.

I hope that these few tips will help you quickly and efficiently prepare your next digital campaign. If you haven’t already signed up to Dizply, you can start your free trial by clicking here. We hope it will make your work much easier.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at support@dizply.com. Our team will be more than glad to help you.