Why a radio advertising launch review needs a written method

What to take away

RAJAR's quarterly listening figures put 49.5 million adults listening each week in the fourth quarter of 2025, the base any England launch review is judged against.
A launch review covers the brief, the booking paperwork, the creative approval trail and the post-campaign report. Sales uplift sits outside it unless the advertiser supplied matched data.
Vendor dashboards are claims, not evidence. Station logs, clearance records and RAJAR reach figures are the independent layer.
Radio commercials are cleared before broadcast by the Radio Advertising Clearance Centre, part of Radiocentre, working to the BCAP Code. Ofcom licenses the stations and expects their advertising to stay inside that code.
Delivery and compliance are scored separately, because a campaign can hit every spot and still fail on disclosure.
Write the review before the next booking opens.

What the review covers

A radio advertising launch review is a structured read of one campaign against the plan that authorised it. Scope covers station selection, airtime bought, the creative that ran, the clearance trail and the reported outcome.

It is not a creative critique, and not an audit of the station's own systems. The reviewer works from documents the advertiser already holds.

Untraceable claims go in the unverified column. That discipline separates a review from a rep's summary email.

Why the method has to be written

A launch leaves three accounts of itself: what the plan promised, what the station says it delivered, and what the paperwork can prove. Only the third survives a change of staff. Once the sales contact has moved on and the campaign folder is closed, an unwritten review leaves the station's own report as the record, and a buyer with a memory of "it felt light" has nothing to take back to whoever signed the order.

Writing it down also keeps the reviewer honest. Naming a source beside every line forces the comfortable claims into the unverified column, and it lets the next buy be scored against this one on the same four areas. A review that lives in an email thread can do neither.

Anyone rebuilding the wider process should start with the operations and delivery guide, which sets the review inside the full cycle: brief, booking confirmation, script clearance, transmission and post-campaign report.

Evidence versus vendor claims

Station sales teams report impressions, spot counts and sometimes recall scores. Treat each as a vendor claim until the log or a third-party figure is attached.

The independent layer is narrower and firmer. RAJAR publishes reach and share by station and demographic, so a buyer can check whether the audience bought matches the audience pitched.

Digital elements need a second check. The IAB UK Gold Standard letter sets out the compliance commitments signatories make on ad quality and data. Any connected digital audio buy should be measured against it.

Personalisation claims sit furthest from proof. Statista's artificial intelligence worldwide statistics collects adoption and spend data, but says nothing about one station's targeting accuracy.

The before and after table

Use the table to separate plan from result. Every row needs a source named beside it, so leave a cell blank rather than estimate.

Row	Plan document	Evidence for the result
Station selection	Media plan, with RAJAR reach for the target audience	RAJAR quarterly figures for the campaign period
Airtime bought	Signed order: stations, dayparts, spot count, rate	Station log or transmission certificate
Creative that ran	Script as submitted, including the disclosure line	Clearance record and the audio as broadcast
Delivery	Spot schedule as booked in the signed order	Station log, counted spot by spot against the order
Compliance	Copy clearance reference for the script	Clearance record held against the signed-off script
Cost	Rate and total on the signed order	Invoice or statement of account

Plan vs Result Evidence Table

Before the launch

Audience base: RAJAR reach
Spots booked: Signed airtime order
Creative approval: Clearance record
Disclosure: Script vs codes
Digital elements: Gold Standard status
Cost: Agreed rate card

After the launch

Audience base: RAJAR rechecked
Spots booked: Transmission log
Creative approval: Copy as broadcast
Disclosure: Broadcast recording
Digital elements: Platform delivery report
Cost: Invoice against order

A blank cell is a finding, and more useful than a rounded number.

Scoring the launch

Score four areas out of five: audience match, delivery accuracy, compliance trail and cost against plan. Report the scores and the total, unweighted, so the weakness is visible.

Four Launch Scoring Areas

Audience match
Delivery accuracy
Compliance trail
Cost against plan

Delivery accuracy is easiest to check. Count the spots in the log against the order, and note any spot moved out of the agreed daypart.

Compliance is skipped most often. Radio commercials are pre-cleared before broadcast by the Radio Advertising Clearance Centre, part of Radiocentre, and the BCAP Code is the advertising code the station works to; Ofcom licenses the station and expects its advertising to stay inside that code. The disclosure line is the spoken statement of an offer's significant conditions — "terms and conditions apply", a closing date, a qualifying purchase — and it has to sit in the script that was cleared and be audible in the spot that went out. A missing disclosure line matters more than a missed spot, because it can affect the advertiser rather than the station.

Cost needs one comparison: invoiced total against the signed order.

A second reader who has not seen the campaign should follow the operating workflow for England, which shows where each document in the table originates and in what order the steps are taken, so the same review can be run on the next buy.

The order to write it in

Pull the brief, the signed order, the clearance record and the post-campaign report, and ask for the log or the transmission certificate.
Fill one row of the table at a time, naming the source beside every line and leaving a cell blank rather than estimating.
Score audience match, delivery accuracy, compliance trail and cost against plan, each out of five, and report the total unweighted.
Write the unverified column last, when the paper trail is exhausted, so nothing gets promoted into it by default.
Have someone who did not book the airtime write and sign the review, and date it.

The table is the template: a finished review is the same six rows, with a source or a blank in every cell.

What was not assessed

This method does not measure sales, brand lift or return on investment. Those need advertiser-held data and a control group, which most England launches lack.

It does not test stations, presenters or platforms. No listening tests were run and no station staff were interviewed.

It does not judge creative quality beyond compliance. Whether a script was any good is an editorial question for the advertiser and the station.

Common questions

Who should run the review?

Someone who did not book the airtime. A buyer reviewing their own buy tends to defend it, and the document loses value once it reads as self-assessment.

How long should it take?

For a single-station England campaign, a working session of two to three hours covers the documents listed above. Multi-station buys take longer, because each log is checked separately.

What if the station will not share logs?

Ask for the transmission certificate instead, which most stations issue as standard. If neither is available, record the delivery row as unverified and say so in the summary.

When should the review be written?

Within four weeks of the campaign ending, while paperwork is still retrievable. Reviews written a quarter later rely on memory, which the method is designed to avoid.