Your sales team spends their day coordinating production instead of selling. Margins erode every quarter while every ‘solution’ promises speed but demands months of painful transition.
After decades working with publishers, we came to a conclusion: AI helps in ad production, but AI alone isn’t the solution to the publisher revenue problem. Spending two days at America’s Newspapers’ Senior Leadership Conference this September, speaking directly to publishers, cemented that belief.
The Workflow Problem
Almost every publisher at the conference has already bought an AI tool. They’re seeing faster output. But when asked the real question—”Is your ad operations actually easier?”—the honest answer was still no.
Why? Because buying an AI tool doesn’t change the workflow around it.
Faster generation alone doesn’t help if briefs are incomplete, approvals move slowly, or the output doesn’t match brand guidelines first time. One publisher said it simply: “We have the speed. We still have the friction.”
That friction lives in three places:
- Incomplete briefs. AI can only work with the direction it gets. A sales rep submits partial specs. Creative chases clarification. Days pass. The sales window closes.
- Fragmented approvals. The brief is in one system. Proofing in another. Brand review in a third. Each handoff is a delay. Each delay costs revenue.
- Brand governance at the end, not the beginning. Someone generates an ad fast. A designer reviews it, catches brand misses, sends it back. Time saved on generation gets spent on fixes.
“AI pays off where the work changes. You can buy the fastest AI generator in the world. But if your team still spends their day chasing approvals and fixing brand issues, you haven’t changed the work. The return comes when a team redesigns how a job moves from brief to finished ad to live campaign, and decides which steps AI should take on and which stay with people.”
– Puneet Lamba, Director of Mediaferry & Publishing Solutions
For multi-property groups serving local advertisers, ad operations is exactly where this conversation matters most. Production volumes recur weekly. The workflow crosses several teams. Small delays compound into missed revenue.
EKCS’ 20+ years in publishing means we know this challenge intimately. We didn’t come with a platform looking for a problem. We came with an understanding of what publishers actually do.
Kevin Shelcott, leading our publishing solutions team, says, “We’ve lived these challenges with publishers. Ad operations isn’t just a production problem—it’s a revenue problem. Every day an ad takes to produce is a day a sales conversation has moved on.”
What Actually Works
Here’s what we’ve seen at a leading UK-based newspaper:
Unified workflow. One route from brief to live ad. Every stage visible in one place. Every handoff automated. No chasing. No delays.
AI handles the routine 90%of the work that includes resizing, templates, compliance checks. Designers handle the 10% where judgment actually matters: complex briefs, premium campaigns, client relationships that build accounts. Quality doesn’t drop. Instead, your team moves from production administration to strategy.
You don’t rip out your existing systems. Mediaferry integrates into Salesforce, Google Ad Manager, your design tools, your approval processes. What works stays. What doesn’t gets fixed. Implementation happens in weeks, not quarters. No massive overhaul. No months of transition pain.
At Newsquest, this approach delivered concrete results: 80% faster ad turnaround, 30% cost savings, and more creative capacity without adding headcount. But the metric that mattered most to their revenue leaders? More deals closed, earlier in the conversation.
The Opportunity
Fix the workflow, and the AI works. Connect the systems, and speed becomes an advantage. Unify approvals, and quality stays.
That’s not an AI story. That’s a revenue story.
Meet Us at Lead2Cash Bash
We’ll be in Florida on November 11, ready to talk about the real revenue opportunity. Bring one part of your workflow that isn’t working. We’ll show you what we’d change and what should stay.
Because every day your sales team manages workflows is a day they’re not closing deals.
Schedule time with us at Lead2Cash Bash, or book a free 30-minute workflow review to see where your ad operations workflow is losing time and money.
