Advertiser Intake Worksheet

Use this worksheet before a contextual campaign is priced, trafficked, or summarized. It turns buyer objective, package lane, creative and destination handoff, floor inputs, reporting cadence, and readout boundary into one proposal record.

The intake record should be clear enough for sales, ad operations, analytics, and the buyer to use the same source of truth. It does not replace a campaign brief or final report; it prevents those documents from starting with different assumptions.

1. Campaign record

Buyer category and offer type

Reader problem the offer helps solve

Campaign objective and decision at stake

Review date, owner, and buyer contact

2. Package lane

Package ID and deal key

Reporting key and buying path

Eligible desk, guide group, page set, or URL pattern

Excluded contexts, devices, dates, or page states

Placement IDs, formats, sizes, and device classes

Native card, sponsorship, or display-only boundary

Package proof visible

Reader job and package fit are named. Placement IDs, sizes, and device classes match the media kit. Exclusions and run-of-publication boundaries are explicit. Reporting key, source fields, and readout grain are recorded.

3. Creative and destination handoff

Display assets, creative IDs, sizes, and active dates

Native fields, brand name, image, copy, and disclosure text

Click URL, UTM values, redirects, and buyer-side tracking

Landing page, form path, source capture, consent, and lead routing

5. Reporting cadence and readout boundary

Primary signal selected before launch

Comparison rule, baseline, holdout, or no-comparison label

Launch QA, mid-flight check, data close, and readout dates

Buyer-side status deadline and downstream fields

Strongest allowed readout language

Descriptive: delivery quality, traffic quality, creative response, and reported outcomes. Directional: comparison with a named prior flight, matched page set, or agreed baseline. Designed lift: holdout, matched-market, randomized, or other pre-set causal comparison.

6. Intake decision

Ready to price: package, creative, destination, floor, and readout fields are usable. Revise before pricing: one or more handoff fields needs buyer or operations clarification. Hold: the offer, package fit, destination, or readout language is not ready.

Proposal summary to carry forward

Open questions before launch

Next owner and due date

Brief, media plan, or source record link

How to use the result

If the record is ready, turn it into the campaign brief and trafficking handoff without changing the package ID, placement list, source fields, or readout boundary. If the record needs revision, ask for the missing buyer, creative, destination, availability, or comparison field before pricing. If the record is on hold, narrow the package, change the destination, or choose descriptive reporting before the campaign moves forward.