At a recent Editor & Publisher webinar on AI and ad production, one audience question stood out above the rest.
“When adding AI to our ad creation process, how do we ensure the traditional Art Department, with their creative experience and originality, is kept in the workflow?”
Based on what publishers are already doing, the answer is more straightforward than most AI conversations make it sound.
Start with what your Art Department was actually doing
At most regional publishers, creative teams were spending the bulk of their time on repetitive production work. Resizing ads across formats. Rebuilding proofs. Producing spec ads for pitches that didn’t convert. Chasing assets from advertisers.
That’s not creative work. It’s production administration. And it was consuming the time of experienced people who were hired to do something more valuable.
AI takes that work off the desk. What’s left is the work that actually requires a designer.
What Mediaferry and Newsquest learnt
When Newsquest integrated Mediaferry across its portfolio of more than 120 local titles, the headline result was speed, creative production shrank from 10 hours to 10 minutes. But the more important outcome was what the creative team started doing with that time.
With AI handling first-pass production, designers moved to the work that required their judgment. Complex briefs. Premium advertiser campaigns. The client relationships where a skilled designer’s involvement made a visible difference.
The 90/10 model
Tariq Husain, Mediaferry’s Chief Technologist, recently explained in the webinar ‘AI handles the routine 90%, it’s fast, consistent, and reliable. Human expertise covers the 10% where judgment changes the outcome.’
In practice that means:
- AI handles: Spec ad generation, format resizing, brand asset extraction, template-driven production, compliance checks
- Designers handle: Complex or high-value briefs, quality review, premium advertiser campaigns, anything where the client relationship requires a human touch
Mediaferry’s platform includes human-in-the-loop review that triggers when AI output falls below a defined quality threshold. A designer reviews the work that needs their judgment and AI handles the rest.
It works alongside your existing tools
Mediaferry connects with existing design tools, approval systems, booking platforms and ad servers. Designers keep working in the environments they know. The AI layer handles the front end of production. The human layer retains ownership of the output.
For another client – McClatchy, integration meant connecting Mediaferry to existing systems rather than replacing them, resulting in faster campaign activation without rebuilding how the creative team operated.
What to tell your creative team
The publishers who have made this transition most successfully were direct with their Art Departments about what was changing and why.
AI is handling the production work that was preventing designers from doing what they were hired to do. The creative judgment, the quality standard, the client relationship, that stays with the team.
Publishers who ask this question early tend to get the transition right.
Watch the full E&P webinar recording for more practical examples from publishers already running this model.
