Press week in the ad department
The ad manager sold the back cover, two full pages, a half page and a strip of small ads for this issue. Each booking was confirmed by email. The flatplan is a PDF the art editor updates, and the ad positions on it came from a conversation last Tuesday.
Four days before press, artwork starts to arrive. One advertiser sends a JPEG with no bleed. One sends last year's ad by mistake. One sends a link that has expired. The small ads are still being written by their owners. The art editor needs final pages tomorrow, and nobody is sure whether the half page moved to the next issue as the advertiser suggested in a phone call.
Why bookings and artwork end up in a scramble
Bookings, positions, artwork and invoices are four linked records kept in four places. The ad manager is the link, and press week tests how much one person can hold.
- Booking confirmations are emails, not records the art team can see.
- Ad specifications are sent as a PDF media pack that advertisers do not read.
- Artwork arrives in email, file transfer links and messages to the editor.
- Technical checks (size, bleed, resolution, colour mode) are done by eye on press day.
- Invoices are raised after publication from memory of what ran.
Where press week costs you
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Late artwork | Pages held, or a house ad run in place of a paid one |
| Wrong size or no bleed | An ad reprinted badly or corrected in a rush |
| Position disagreement | An advertiser in the wrong place, and a discount to settle it |
| Booking not on the flatplan | A paid ad left out |
| Invoice missed | An ad that ran and was never billed |
The bookings log and artwork checks we build
- A bookings log per issue with advertiser, size, position, price you agreed and status, which the art editor sees as a live flatplan.
- A confirmation email to the advertiser with their exact specification, deadline and a personal upload link.
- Artwork uploads checked automatically for page size, bleed, image resolution and colour mode, with a plain explanation sent back if something is off.
- Chasers before the deadline for anything missing, from the ad manager's address, with the advertiser's own booking details.
- Small ads and classifieds collected by form, with a word count and preview so the advertiser approves the text.
- Invoices raised in Xero or QuickBooks from the log once the issue is published, for the ads that actually ran.
Where a publication uses a dedicated ad sales tool already, we look at connecting to it before suggesting anything new.
Press week, calmer
Bookings go into the log as they are sold, and the flatplan updates. Advertisers receive the spec with their upload link. When a file arrives without bleed, the advertiser hears straight away, with a note of what is needed, while there are still days to fix it. By the deadline the ad manager sees a list of what is missing and who has been chased.
When the half page moves to the next issue, it is moved in the log, and the flatplan and the invoice follow. After publication, invoices go out for what ran, and nothing is left to memory.
Series bookings work the same way. An advertiser who takes a quarter page in four consecutive issues is booked once, and each issue's log shows the ad with its own artwork status, so a new creative for the winter issue is chased on its own deadline while the others reuse approved files. The art editor can see at a glance which ads are repeats and which are new, and the ad manager can see which series are coming to an end and need a renewal conversation.
Is ad production your press-week headache?
- Ad bookings are confirmed by email and tracked in one person's head.
- Artwork with the wrong size or no bleed arrives most issues.
- The flatplan and the bookings have disagreed.
- Chasing artwork takes most of press week.
- An ad has run without being invoiced.