For agencies and creative teams producing TikTok videos, Reels, and other social content, ad proofing is more than a good idea — it’s a necessity.
A solid proofing process can make the difference between a viral hit and a cringe-worthy post that misses the mark and tarnishes your brand.
You already know that reviewing your content before it goes live is essential, but the real challenge lies in doing it well. Without the right ad proofing tools, proofing social content can spiral into miscommunication, outdated versions, and missed revisions.
With a streamlined process, though, you can elevate content quality and speed up approvals. Let’s dive into how it’s done.
Ad proofing is the process of evaluating all aspects of an advertising campaign before it’s released, published, or posted, including copy (spelling, grammar, appropriateness, effectiveness), visuals, branding, and overall quality.
In a creative or agency setting, ad proofing is a collaborative process that allows all the right people to evaluate a piece of creative and either offer feedback or approval. It’s a crucial part of quality control that can save your company, agency, or clients from embarrassment and worse.
In modern contexts, ad proofing typically happens using a dedicated online proofing software tool or some other form of software or analog proofing process. This allows teams (including remote or distributed teams) to streamline approval workflows faster.
For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus specifically on social media ad proofing. Given the quick turnaround nature of social media ads, they tend to have their own unique proofing workflow as opposed to other media campaigns.
Getting social ad proofing right requires a clearly defined process. Follow these six steps to create that process for your organization.
It needs to be clear who’s looking at what, who’s responsible for what, and who has the final say.
Not everyone on your team is an expert in everything. At the same time, sometimes we miss seemingly obvious flaws in the stuff we create because we’re too close to it.
So while your copywriter may have the most skill at, you know, copywriting, others may spot what the copywriter is unable to see.
That’s different than letting the copywriter have the final say on design choices or giving the graphic designer veto power over copy. So take some time to define who’s responsible and accountable, or who has the final say.
If the team is struggling to come to consensus here, there are paradigms that can help, including RACI charts or the RAPID model.
Since you’re proofing creative material, the proofing process can get a little subjective. So it’s a good idea to introduce a little objectivity where you can.
To do this, define what is and isn’t OK for your brand (and for this project). Proofing guidelines tell team members what’s expected in their creative, such as brand colors, logos, style decisions (often logged in a style guide), etc.
The clearer and more comprehensive you can make your proofing guidelines, the better. Just don’t go overboard and create something so detailed that no one can realistically follow it all as they proof content.
The creative you’re proofing is all digital, so it’s a good idea to set up a centralized proofing system where all involved can add their feedback and interact with others’ input.
Using collaborative ad proofing software like Ziflow makes this simple and effective. Your organization enjoys one central location for managing proofs, feedback, and approvals, with comments tied to specific frames (in video content). Pulling all reviewers into the same digital space to see and interact with each other’s feedback will greatly streamline the ad proofing process and boost the results you achieve.
Open collaboration can be a good thing. But many creative workflows require a logical sequence for feedback and approval. For example, you might need specific people or departments to offer feedback before the ad makes its way to management or client review.
That’s why one of the best practices for online proofing is creating and using review groups and stages.
Take time to build out a structured workflow that pulls in the right feedback in the right order. The goal is efficient feedback collection and speedy approval, coupled with appropriate thoroughness.
Ad proofing may also be cyclical: when the first round of feedback is collected, the project may return to creatives to polish and refine. It’s vital to create a way for stakeholders to communicate clearly throughout the proofing process. This way misunderstandings can be avoided and the ad proofing process can stay on track.
Using a centralized proofing system may solve this communication challenge as well. If you’re relying on general-purpose tools (like a PDF reader and a cloud storage drive), you may need a separate collaboration tool for this communication. Microsoft Teams, Slack, or similar tools may be a help.
Once you’ve gathered feedback and team members understand what revisions they need to make, it’s back to the drawing board. (Or the keyboard, or the video editing suite — you get the idea.)
From there, you’ll want to run an abbreviated version of the workflow you just completed. Run the revised ad through the stakeholders that you’ve defined as final approvers. Once the advertisement is approved, you’re ready to release it — and then you’re on to the next project!
Not every social ad needs the exact same things during proofing. For this piece, we’re dividing ads into two relatively broad categories: static and video social ads.
Proofing static social ads involves more than just checking the visual design and copy. The platform, device type, and even user behavior can dramatically impact how your ad appears and performs. Here are key areas to focus on when proofing static social ads:
Video ads are the most complex social content by far. All the visual elements from static social are still in play, but now they occur over time and constantly changing imagery.
Proofing ads digitally is a requirement for many creative businesses (where the notion of everyone working on-site all the time is long gone). Using software built for creative proofing and social ad proofing offers lots of advantages over general business collaboration tools.
Ad proofing software enables teams to collaborate in real time, directly “on top of” creative assets — including frame-perfect video feedback with some tools. Team members, managers, and clients can provide precise feedback, annotations, and approvals in one centralized platform. Everyone’s looking at the same version of the content and seeing the same comments and questions, reducing miscommunication.
Ad proofing software also provides version control. It automatically tracks changes and versions of ad creative so that everyone using the platform is evaluating the same, most up-to-date version of the deliverable.
This eliminates the confusion and miscommunication that can arise when saving endless updated versions of a file.
Plus, with version control, you can roll back to an earlier version of the ad should you need it. Both of these advantages mean you no longer have to end up with a dozen or more versions of a file (think videoad.mov_final_final2_revD_forrealthistime). You’ll save on storage space and present a more professional image to clients as a result.
Without ad proofing software, collecting feedback can be… kind of messy. Let’s say you post the LinkedIn ad in the right Teams space or Slack channel. You get some specific feedback there, though two contributors offer contradictory directions (and don’t seem to be aware of the other). A manager or client rep shoots you an email with a copy of the asset with hand-drawn markup showing what they want. Someone else shoots you a direct message via chat.
On and on this goes, and before long you have three or four different discussions and email threads going. It’s almost inevitable that something gets missed.
Proofing software gets rid of all of that, consolidating all feedback in one place. It’s much easier to review and address comments systematically, helping your team stay more organized and efficient.
With proofing software you’ll have a clear audit trail of who reviewed what and when, where specific suggestions came from, and what changes were made. No more mystery changes or secret side discussions. This increased transparency helps teams take responsibility and avoid blame-shifting, improving the quality of your end product and the speed and thoroughness of your proofing process.
Now you know why having an ad proofing process is essential and how the right ad proofing tool can improve workflows and outputs. But choosing the best ad proofing and approval software can still be a challenge.
We’ve collected the four best ad proofing tools that creative teams and agencies rely on for ad proofing. Check out our thoughts on each of them!
Ziflow is the industry’s leading enterprise-grade proofing software. It’s online ad proofing software that creative, marketing, and design teams use to produce higher quality ad designs faster with fewer errors, versions, and revisions.
Unlike other platforms used to proof advertising jobs, Ziflow offers sophisticated review, approval, and collaboration for your entire ad campaign lifecycle. It’s advertising proofing and design review for every campaign stage.
Our cloud delivery platform helps creative teams control large volumes of ads; enable internal and external, multi-stage review workflows; and much more.
Key features include:
With Ziflow, your team can build separate review steps for all your internal teams (copy, design, marketing, etc.), plus you can control when and how clients and external reviewers are looped in.
Next-gen annotation tools enable sophisticated annotations and markups — frame-perfect in video formats. Teams can more easily collect feedback while keeping the discussion both detailed and focused.
Ziflow also understands that some conversations should stay inside the house, so to speak. Organizations can include both public and private comments, giving you control over which conversations clients can and can’t see.
Add to the mix transparent version comparison and file management, and even an AI-powered chatbot to keep your reviews moving forward, and you have one of the most complete ad approval tools out there.
ReviewStudio is another option for online proofing software. Designed for marketing teams, ad agencies, and creatives, ReviewStudio can handle more than 100 file types and offers most of the features you’d expect from this kind of tool. Internal/external feedback, precise markup, and configurable review settings are all here.
The Live Feedback tool is a standout feature, allowing teams to host synced review sessions where the host can present a piece of creative and gather feedback in the moment.
Markup.io is a visual collaboration tool that focuses on contextual feedback. One of the standout features here is Loom integration, which allows contributors to offer video feedback in video form. This is a great addition if you find that a screenshare video is the best way to share specific feedback.
Markup.io is an early-stage product that only recently added a paid Pro tier. The free plan is a great option for teams just getting started, and the paid version looks to work well for smaller teams. Markup.io lacks feature depth and may not scale particularly well for larger organizations or high-volume creative teams.
Markup Hero is a bit different from the others. The short version: Markup Hero is fantastic if you’re dealing with static content like digital ads or web pages. But it doesn’t do video.
Markup Hero allows users to take screenshots (including scrolling screenshots of long web pages) and upload those screenshots (along with other images, PDFs, and Google Workspace files) for collaborative review. From there, the feature set is impressive: annotate, edit, collaborate, blur sensitive information, crop, sign, and much more.
If your ad proofing workflows revolve around web content and other static media, Markup Hero is worth a close look. But if you need video reviewing capabilities, look elsewhere.
Effective ad proofing is key for creative teams and agencies. Doing it well requires clearly defined processes, an understanding of what various ad types require, and the right collaborative platform for proofing ads.
Ziflow is the industry-leading ad proofing platform you need to streamline your ad proofing workflows. With Ziflow powering your proofing, your teams can increase efficiency and accuracy, leading to higher-quality creative materials and increased output volume.