A video meant for advertising is not a video you put into advertising. It is shot and delivered differently.
What the platform rejects
The grounds for rejection recur and can be prevented at the shoot.
Medical and health claims, promises of results, mentioning supposed personal characteristics of the person watching, before-and-afters on the body, over-assertive financial vocabulary.
To which more mundane grounds are added: music you do not have the rights to, a visible third-party brand, text covering the whole screen.
The applicable rules change, depend on the sector and on the country of distribution, and a rejection is not always final. What may be asserted about a product further depends on your situation and is checked with a lawyer, before the shoot.
The useful reflex: have the client review the script before filming, not the video afterwards.
Deliver a master with nothing burnt in
That is the most frequent request and the least anticipated.
The reference file must be clean: no burnt-in subtitles, no text, no music on the same track as the voice, no logo. The advertiser will then add what they need, in the language and format of each market.
So deliver three things: the clean master, a subtitled version ready to publish, and separate voice and ambience files. That is what allows versions without calling you back.
Several openings, one same body
A campaign does not test videos, it tests openings.
The body of the video, the demonstration, the argument, the result, stays identical. What changes is the first sentence and the first shot: a question, a problem, a figure, an objection.
Shoot them one after the other, in the same light and sound conditions, so they are interchangeable in the edit. An opening shot on another day does not match.
No sound, with subtitles
Most first seconds are watched in silence.
What is said must therefore be readable, and what is shown must be understandable without a word. Subtitles go in the central zone described above, never at the bottom.
Check them by hand. An automatic transcription in regional Spanish gets product names and prices wrong, and an error in a price is a commercial problem, not a spelling mistake.
What to deliver so an ad can actually run
| Element | Expected | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Vertical, plus a square version | A single version |
| Hook | Three variants of the first three seconds | One hook only |
| Subtitles | Burned in, readable without sound | A separate track |
What is tested, and in what order
The hook first, then the argument, finally the call to action. Changing all three at once says nothing about what worked.
What gets an ad rejected
An unverifiable claim, a misleading before-and-after, text promising a result, or a missing advertising disclosure.
Measure the purchase, not the views
That is the only metric that decides whether your contract is renewed.
A much-watched video that does not sell will be cut; a little-watched video that sells will be bought again. So ask the brand what it looks at, and propose the next variant on the basis of that figure.
It is also the best commercial argument you have: a creator who talks about the campaign's result is working on a different level from one who talks about their video.
