Who Signs Off AI Generated Ads: An Approval Checklist
AI generated ads need four signatures before they run: product marketing on accuracy, legal on claims and rights, brand on visual treatment, and media on format and destination. The way to keep four signatures from stalling a campaign is to collect each at the stage where it is cheapest. Claims at the brief, visuals at the storyboard, accuracy at scene review, format at the final cut.
Approval was already a weak point. AI generated ads made it visible. A team that used to produce a few spots a quarter can now produce a dozen variants a month. Each one carries the same claims, rights, and brand exposure as the spots did.
The creative approval process either moves upstream or becomes the bottleneck. One final review round with everyone in it is how AI video ads miss launch dates.
Who approves what
Each decision in the creative approval workflow has one owner. Two owners for one decision is how approvals stall.
At the brief
- Campaign goal, audience, offer: marketing lead.
- Every claim the ad will make, with its evidence: legal or compliance.
- Which assets may enter production and under what rights: legal, with brand.
At direction review
- Concept and script carry the approved message, proof, and action: marketing lead.
At the storyboard
- Visual treatment, logo use, tone: brand.
At scene review
- Product shown as it ships, features as they exist: product marketing.
- Generated people, voices, and music are cleared: legal.
At the final cut
- Format, duration, safe zones, captions, destination match: media, once per format.
- Release for activation: named final approver.
The owners can be the same two people in a small team. The stages cannot be collapsed. A claim that gets its first legal read at the final cut sends the whole ad back to the storyboard.
Legal and ad compliance: claims and rights
Two signatures come from legal. The first is on the brief, before any scene exists, and covers every claim the ad will make, spoken or shown. A generated before-and-after sequence is a claim. A generated product screen showing a feature is a claim.
Under the FTC's substantiation policy, an objective claim needs a reasonable basis before the ad runs, generated footage included.
The second signature is at scene review and covers rights. Generated presenters raise likeness questions, generated voices raise consent questions, and library music raises license questions. The U.S. Copyright Office's AI initiative separates likeness, authorship, and training into distinct questions.
What the marketer hands legal at this stage is the clearance list: for each generated person, voice, or track, where it came from and what permission it carries. Legal answers the questions; the marketer's job is to make sure the list is complete before the scenes render.
Legal should not be asked to review the whole ad for the first time at the final cut. Give legal the claims list and the asset list at the brief, and the specific scenes with people, voices, and music at scene review. Everything else in the ad is someone else's decision.
Brand: visual treatment at the storyboard
The look gets brand approval before it is rendered. Logo placement, color, typography, product presentation, tone, and the lines the brand will not cross are all visible in a storyboard. Changing them there costs a conversation. Changing them in a rendered scene costs a regeneration and another review.
References need brand approval as well. Generated scenes follow the character, setting, camera, and style references they are given. A brand reviewer who signs off on the reference set has already approved most of what the finished scenes will look like.
What brand should not be asked to do: approve claims. If a brand reviewer is rewriting a claim at the storyboard, the brief skipped a step.
Product marketing: accuracy at scene review
At scene review, product marketing checks that the product on screen is the product that ships. That covers package shape, label, colors, the interface as it exists today, and the count of items in the box. Generated scenes drift. The person who knows the product is the reviewer most likely to catch a feature that does not exist or a screen from two releases ago.
Scenes are reviewed one at a time. A wrong product shot in scene three is a scene three problem. It does not reopen scenes one, two, and four.
Media: format at the final cut, once per format
Each delivery format gets a media sign-off at the size it will run. A 16:9 streaming spot and a 9:16 cut for Reels are two approvals, not one, because the safe zones, the caption placement, and the duration rules differ.
Google's video creative guidance looks for a logo in the first five seconds, duration matched to objective, and all three orientations in an ad group. Its video ad specifications vary length and text limits with campaign type. Other platforms have their own rules, and media is the owner who knows them.
Media also confirms the destination. The landing page has to show what the ad promised. An approved ad pointing at an unapproved page is not approved.
The approval record
Every approved ad should leave a record a later reviewer can trace. It lists the file and version, who approved which stage and when, the permitted channels and markets, any rights expiration, and which model rendered which scene. When a variant is cut from the master six weeks later, the record shows what was already approved and what the new format still has to clear.
The record is also what makes revision cheap. A change request that names the scene, the problem, the required outcome, and the elements that must not change can be routed to exactly one owner. "Make it feel more premium" goes to everyone and comes back from no one.
How Starti keeps the signatures in one place
In Starti Video Agent, the brief, concept options, storyboard, scenes, and final cut sit on one canvas, and nothing moves to the next stage without approval. Legal reads the claims and the asset list at the brief. Brand approves the storyboard and references before rendering. Product marketing reviews scenes one at a time, and media checks each format from the same approved master.
A change request reaches one scene, and the signatures already collected stay valid. Each stage is described in the AI video ad production guide.
Map your current approval chain onto a Starti demo and count how many signatures move upstream.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should give final approval on an AI video ad?
One named person, usually the marketing lead who owns the campaign. Final approval confirms that the earlier approvals all point at the same delivery file. It does not reopen them.
Does legal need to review every AI-generated variant?
Legal needs to approve the claims list and the asset rights once, at the brief, and review the specific scenes with generated people, voices, or music at scene review. Variants that reuse approved claims and approved scenes do not need a new legal read.
What is different about approving an AI-generated ad versus a filmed one?
The claims standard is the same. The new work is at scene review. Generated product shots can drift from the real product. Generated people and voices raise likeness and consent questions that filmed footage settled at the shoot.
How do we stop approvals from delaying launch?
Give each owner one decision and place it at the earliest stage where that decision is visible. Most delays trace back to a claim or a rights question that surfaced at the final cut and could have been settled at the brief.