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In practice
Most campaign delays are not prospecting failures; they are approval queues wearing an operations costume. The blockers arrive predictably: content approvals that need three stakeholders and a fortnight (while the publisher’s editorial calendar moves on without them), legal review that treats a 200-word insertion paragraph like a contract, brand teams vetoing anchors or formats after the negotiation closed, and the silent one — the approver who leaves and whose queue waits for a replacement.
The management is process, not pressure: a named approver with authority (a committee is a blocker with a meeting schedule), a batching cadence (weekly approval packs so every placement doesn’t trigger its own cycle), a default-by-deadline rule stated in the contract (placements approved unless amended within the window — the only way publishers’ timelines get respected), and the claims pre-clearance that keeps legal out of the loop for routine drafts: the brief’s claims inventory is reviewed once, and drafts drawing only from it ship without re-review.
The diagnosis conversation belongs in week one: ask how approvals worked for the last content programme — the answer predicts the campaign’s actual pace better than any plan. The honest cost framing for the client: every week of approval latency is placements unbought — the budget doesn’t pause, it under-delivers — which is why the blocker audit, not the prospecting pace, is the first thing an under-delivering campaign examines.
See also: Campaign briefs, Placement approval workflows, Approving placements before they go live.
