Operations
Part of Seven steps that keep radio advertising operations on track
Set radio advertising service standards without slowing your team down
How to write radio advertising service standards that survive real campaigns: the criteria to score, the evidence to ask for, and who owns the review.
What to take away
A Bristol retailer books three stations for a spring sale and discovers that copy clearance, invoice reconciliation and campaign reporting each follow a different rule. A service standard is the document that stops that happening.
- A service standard states what a supplier will deliver, by when, and who signs it off.
- Score suppliers on evidence you can ask for, such as written clearance times and makegood terms.
- Keep data duties separate from broadcast duties, because different bodies enforce them.
- Review the standard every quarter, or it drifts within two booking cycles.
What does a radio advertising service standard actually cover?
A service standard is a one-page statement of what a station, sales house or agency will do for you, and when. The commercial contract sets price and liability. The standard sets the working rhythm: booking confirmations, copy deadlines, reporting dates.
Five service standard items
- Copy clearance
- Campaign start confirmation
- In-flight changes
- Makegoods for missed spots
- End-of-campaign reporting
Write each item as a measurable promise rather than an intention. "Copy cleared within one working day" can be checked; "responsive service" cannot. That difference matters when a campaign goes wrong and you decide whether to escalate.
Avoid restating the contract. If a point already carries a financial remedy, such as a pre-emption credit, reference it rather than rewriting it.
If you are still assembling the wider process, the operations and delivery guide sets out how booking, traffic and reporting fit together across a year.
How do you score a supplier against the standard?
Turn each promise into a criterion and score it from one to five after every campaign. Ask for evidence rather than impressions: email timestamps, station logs, invoices.
Scoring criteria and evidence
Criterion
- Copy clearance
- Written clearance time
- Start confirmation
- Confirmation before first spot
- Makegood handling
- Replacement spots for missed airtime
- Reporting
- Post-campaign report on agreed date
- Data handling
- Consent records and suppression lists
Evidence to request
- Copy clearance
- 1 to 5
- Start confirmation
- 1 to 5
- Makegood handling
- 1 to 5
- Reporting
- 1 to 5
- Data handling
- 1 to 5
Score
- Copy clearance
- Start confirmation
- Makegood handling
- Reporting
- Data handling
A supplier averaging below three on two criteria is a conversation, not yet a termination. Publish the scores to your own team so buyers and planners work from the same view of a station.
The data handling row moves with the law. Reform continues under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, so revisit consent wording each year instead of filing it away.
Where do consent and marketing rules sit in the standard?
Broadcast and digital audio advertising share a service standard but not a rulebook. Ofcom licences stations, and the Advertising Standards Authority applies the advertising codes. The ASA publishes its decisions, and the rulings database is the quickest way to see how compliance arguments were settled in practice.
Where you use listener data to target or retarget, the ICO's direct marketing guidance explains when consent is needed and when legitimate interests can be relied on.
Keep these duties in their own section of the standard. A copy clearance query and a data protection query rarely need the same person, and mixing them slows both.
Who owns the standard once it is agreed?
Name one owner. In most teams that is the media manager who signs the insertion order. They hold the master document, log exceptions and chair a short review each quarter.
Escalation needs a route before a campaign goes live. Agree what triggers a written complaint: a missed makegood, a clearance delay beyond the agreed window, or a report more than five working days late.
Smaller teams often split the role, with one person owning supplier scores and another owning data queries.
The radio advertising operating workflow article shows where those triggers sit between briefing and reconciliation.
Common questions
How long should a copy clearance standard allow?
One working day for standard commercial copy is a common baseline, with longer windows agreed in advance for scripts needing legal or medical sign-off. Write down the point at which the clock starts, for example receipt of the final script.
Do the same standards apply to digital audio?
Yes in principle, though the evidence differs. Podcast and streaming buys need delivery data and consent records, while broadcast buys lean on station logs and transmission confirmations.
What happens if a station misses the standard?
Log the exception, ask for the makegood or credit in writing, and raise it at the quarterly review. Repeated misses on the same criterion justify moving budget at the next planning round.
Should agencies be scored on the same rubric?
Use the same criteria with different weights. An agency answers for reporting and data handling; a station answers for clearance and transmission.
