Creative & Content

Fast content, slow approvals: why automated creative governance is the safety net all brands need

“Anything rules based can be automated, and with advances in image recognition technology, we can look at assets and make better judgements than human, with a lower rate of error”

Content volumes today force governance-forward design. Research from mid-2025 found that 96% of marketers saw content demand increase two-fold. A further 62% saw it grow five times or more, and 71% believe content demand is going to grow more than five-fold between now and 2027.

Ask yourself, are teams going to grow five-fold to meet this demand?

Clearly not, yet content on this scale demands governance. And at this scale, it is something that is impossible to add in ‘after the fact’. Creative governance means ensuring assets are fit for purpose before activation.

This covers making sure they are consistent with the brand, meeting media platform regulations and best practices, and adhering to advertising regulations for the industry and geography they are intended for.

But we knew this already. Often brands have multiple stakeholders assessing assets for whether they are on brand, will work in media and are legally compliant.

The problem is that through the many versions and changes an asset may go through, it becomes increasingly hard to control for all those requirements. As with any human process, there is human error and it can be very time-consuming, delaying activation.

Today, before we even get into our potential five-fold increase content deluge, marketers are already facing a triple creative governance threat – Waste; Failure; Fines:

Waste. Marketers are creating assets which never see the light of day because they fail to meet basic platform requirements, or miss campaign deadlines, due to delays with approval. This is instantly solvable with automated pre-flight creative governance.

Failure. Millions of dollars are wasted on in-flight optimisation, by creating assets and spending media to see what works. The insights from this are often tactical. This is funding failure. Ensuring media-readiness and brand coherence pre-flight is easy to do and maximises ROAS without the need to create as much.

Fines. Regulators have built AI tools to catch non-compliant ads. In the UK, 100,000 sites and apps are in scope of the Online Safety Act, showing the breadth of services where ads and branded content may appear and need tighter placement controls.

Non-compliance with the UK Online Safety Act can lead to fines up to £18 million or 10% of global annual revenue. To avoid fines, Marketing Procurement should be looking to derisk their marketing activities by automating pre-flight checks.

“What is new for now, is that we can apply AI to automate these checks, speeding up activation, increasing quality, ensuring campaigns go live and derisking regulatory compliance through minimising human error,” insists Lindsay Hong, CEO and Co-Founder of SmartAssets.

It’s the alchemy of machine and human in harmony that makes future-resilient creative governance the bedrock of successful content delivery at scale.

“Anything rules based can be automated, and with advances in image recognition technology, we can look at assets and make better judgements than human, with a lower rate of error,” Hong explains.

“However, there are still times where there needs to be a human call made. For example a brand may decide to exceed the best practice for number of words in a headline in order to support longer-term branding objectives.

They may decide to ignore a cultural norm, such as not showing naked feet in an asset in order to be provocative. Or they may feel that while the platform flags an actor in an alcohol ad as looking under 25, they know for sure that the actor isn’t under 25 and they are prepared to take the risk, as reshooting would be too expensive.”

Cultural nuance is key because the subtle differences in regulatory framework between geographies are myriad. Canada, for example, advises influencer disclosure obligations should be used “from the inception of any influencer marketing campaign”.

The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) requires ads to be clearly labelled, to show who paid, and why a user is seeing the ad. There are potential fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover for non-compliance.

Legal departments are not marketing experts, or vice versa. Tech-supported creative governance can help. Most markets publish their advertising regulations, often with category-specific rules.

We are able to build these into the platform and strengthen them with proprietary models and datasets, to automate checks and flag assets where there may be issues with compliance,” Hong reveals. “This means fewer mistakes slip through the net.”

You don’t need to be cowering under a legal hammer. The ability to distil your own company’s dos and don’ts into a form of automation is a huge timesaver.

“For clients where their brand is sacred, we can take 148 pages of brand guidelines that have been lovingly created and have every asset scored against these instantly, making sure that when you are on version ten of an asset, the campaign intent and brand is carefully safeguarded, and nothing is forgotten.”

Much has been said about how implementing AI or building content at scale models from the point of creation means transformation with a capital T at both the in-house and agency level. Hong believes this may not necessarily be the case.

If there is a need for full-scale renovation of content practices, then this is indeed the ideal time to develop a robust creative governance strategy that is active from the get-go. But it is also a highly flexible approach that can mould itself to existing workflows.

“Every company has a slightly different structure, be it using agency or in-house teams, be it tech versus production teams that own the purchasing decisions. Automation reduces the amount of low value “busy work”, which frees up resource to work on the more human/ creative elements of marketing.

Generally, this results in the retention of talent and reduction in burn-out as well as keeping control of costs. Learning to work with AI based platforms is also a highly sought after skill, which opens up opportunity for people.”

Did you know that automation also plays a vital political role. It is the original ‘computer says no’ moment.

“We seek to better build trust and confidence between creative, media and compliance teams. We do this by reducing subjectivity and bringing everybody onto the same page about what makes an asset fit-for-purpose.

There is also something about tech platforms that cools down some of the emotions that can run through this process. When AI is making a judgement on a piece of creative, it’s not personal.”

For too long, creative governance has been seen as the check box at the end of content production. A last legal or brand guideline hurdle to clear before sending a campaign out into the world.

It has taken a content explosion to wake marketers up to the realisation that not only is check box governance an increasingly risky strategy, the alternative – creative governance as standard – is far more than just a compliance exercise.

It is a framework that actually enables faster, safer, more effective content production that delivers on time, every time.

About Lindsay Hong

Lindsay Hong is a dynamic force in marketing and advertising, known for blending vision, resilience, and innovation to drive meaningful impact.

As CEO and co-founder of SmartAssets and Advisor to the Board at multilingual content production agency, Locaria, she brings over 15 years of experience helping top global brands reach international audiences.

A passionate advocate for emerging technology, global collaboration, and inclusive leadership, Lindsay won Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s 2023 Innovation “Shark Tank,” securing $1 million in funding to launch SmartAssets—a generative-AI platform that empowers brands to predict creative performance before spending.

She is a widely published thought leader and speaker on global content production, creative effectiveness, advertising and artificial intelligence.