Approving a UK retailer media campaign brief

A retailer media plan becomes a decision only when someone can approve a specific proposal. Before signing off, put the commercial question, product eligibility, proposed booking, cost basis and reporting promise in one brief.

A format menu or forecast alone does not show that the inventory is available for your products or that the resulting report will answer your question.

State the decision the campaign should inform

Write one primary question, such as whether a defined product range can generate attributable sales in a named retail category during a launch period. Name the products, dates, geography and budget ceiling.

Choose the primary decision measure and any secondary measures. If the aim is awareness, do not make sales attribution the only test; if the aim is sales, distinguish reported attributed sales from causal uplift.

Ask the retailer what measures it will report and how each relates to the campaign objective. A standard's definition does not guarantee that a particular proposal includes each field.

Turn the retailer proposal into an approval record

Record the proposal version and the person who supplied it. Ask the retailer to confirm the exact inventory, dates, eligible product identifiers, target stores or digital surfaces, and the buying unit.

On-site, off-site and in-store are industry environment labels; they do not establish bookable placements. The companion format-verification guide sets out the evidence to request for each environment.

Get the commercial terms into the same record: quoted media amount, currency, production or data charges, any minimum commitment, cancellation terms, and whether tax is included. These are questions for the specific quote, not assumed market terms.

A forecast should remain labelled as a forecast. If availability or a fee is still provisional, mark the brief conditional rather than treating it as approved.

The brand's commerce owner should confirm product availability and destination readiness for the proposed period. The creative owner should confirm who supplies assets, specifications, deadlines and approval rights.

These sign-offs are separate from choosing a retail media provider or allocating placements across a portfolio.

Use shared terms to describe the proposal

IAB Europe defines retail media as digital advertising space, retail data assets and in-store opportunities owned by a retailer or marketplace and made available to brands for campaigns. Its stated campaign goals include brand awareness, sales and new product discovery.

Include the goal relevant to this proposal so the retailer's description can be checked against the decision in the brief.

The IAB Europe guide distinguishes on-site advertising on a retailer's own digital properties from off-site advertising bought on external inventory using retailer data.

These labels help describe the proposal, but do not confirm its specific inventory, product eligibility or booking.

Agree what the close-out report can prove

Before booking, ask for the reporting fields, time zone, attribution window, included products, gross or net sales basis, and treatment of returns or cancellations where applicable. Ask whether impressions or ad plays will be supplied as delivered activity or estimates.

Specify the comparison you will make after the campaign. A simple before-and-after sales comparison may be useful for monitoring, but it does not by itself establish incremental sales.

If a causal question matters, decide whether an appropriate test is feasible before claiming uplift.

Critical Reporting Metrics for Close-Out Campaign Analysis

Approve, revise or hold

Give the brief a clear outcome: approve when the commercial terms, inventory and report meet the stated decision; revise when a proposal detail can be corrected; hold when a critical fact is unavailable.

Name the approver and keep the final proposal version with the decision. This makes a later change in dates, product coverage or measurement visible rather than silently changing what was approved.

For example, a hypothetical launch brief might be held because the retailer can quote category-page media but has not confirmed whether the new SKUs are eligible or whether the sales report will separate those SKUs.

The next step is to obtain those two answers, not to infer them from the placement description.