Video Ad Approvals Without the Slack and Drive Chaos

A 6-second bumper and a 15-second pre-roll in three aspect ratios: six MP4s, maybe 80 MB total. Too big for email, so they go to Google Drive. The link goes into Slack. The client watches on their phone, replies in Teams because that's where their team lives, someone screenshots frame 3 with a red circle, and a week later there are four cuts of "v2" and nobody is sure which one the client actually meant when they wrote "the second one is fine".

Video is the format where review chaos costs the most, because every round involves a re-export, and re-exports take time.

Where it breaks

Drive and Dropbox are storage, not review. You can comment on a file, but the comment says "at around 8 seconds" and the client means 0:07.4. There is no way to point at a frame. Version 2 is a new file, so the comments on version 1 stay on version 1 and the context is gone.

Slack and Teams are conversations. The cut, the feedback, and the approval end up in three different threads, one of which is a DM. Search for "approved" three weeks later and you will find fourteen messages, none of them about this video.

WeTransfer expires. Enough said.

Email bounces over 25 MB, and video is always over 25 MB.

The result is not just annoyance; it is a real risk. When a spot airs with the wrong end card, "who approved this cut" is a question with a money answer, and "there was a thumbs-up in Slack" is not an answer.

What a video review actually needs

Only four things, and they are the same four things banner review needs:

1. The video plays in the browser, at once, on any device, without downloading and without an account. If the client has to install or log in, review slips to tomorrow.
2. Feedback is attached to a moment. A comment at 0:07 is unambiguous. "The second scene" is not.
3. Approval is recorded: who, when, on which version. Not an emoji.
4. The new cut replaces the old one on the same link. The client should never search for "the latest link".

Dedicated video review tools (Frame.io, Wipster and the like) do this well, and if you are an editing house that lives in video, use one. The problem for banner and display studios is that video is one of three formats in the same campaign. The pre-roll ships with the HTML5 banners and the statics; putting the video in one tool and the banners in another means two links, two sets of comments, and a client who now has two logins.

One link for the whole campaign, video included

This is the case for keeping video inside the banner preview: the client gets one link where the 300×250 runs next to the 728×90 next to the 16:9 pre-roll next to the 9:16 story cut, and reviews all of it in one sitting.

In BannerPeek that looks like:

• Drop the MP4s in the campaign along with the zips and images. They are served from a CDN, so an 80 MB file plays immediately instead of buffering from Drive.
• Group them how the media plan groups them ("Social video", "Pre-roll", "Desktop banners").
• The client clicks on the video at the moment something is wrong. The comment records the exact second along with the pin, and appears in your inbox with the timestamp.
• Approval is one click, with name, time and IP.
• Upload the new cut as a new version; same link, comments from the previous version kept underneath for reference.

No login for the client, no download, and one URL that you can paste into the Slack thread with a clear conscience, because the thread is no longer where the decisions live.

A note on file size and formats

Keep review cuts to H.264 MP4, 1080p or 720p, under 50 MB where possible. It plays everywhere, loads fast on mobile, and is close enough to the final for creative approval. Send the ProRes master only when the spot is approved and the trafficker needs it; nobody reviews on a master.

Try it

BannerPeek has a free plan, no credit card. Drop the next campaign's videos and banners in, send one link, and see whether the "which version" question disappears. For the banner side of the workflow, see how to share banner ads with clients.