Open the folder where your creator content lives. Count the files, then try to answer one question about any of them: are we still allowed to run this.
Most brands cannot, and it is not a filing problem. The video was saved because saving a video is easy. The agreement that came with it was in an email thread belonging to somebody who has since changed jobs, and that is the part that decided what the file is worth.
Two years is where it breaks
The first year feels fine. Everyone remembers the campaigns, the person who briefed them is still in the team, and the volume is small enough to hold in your head.
By the second year the volume has crossed the point where memory works, staff have moved, the agency has changed, and the material sits in three places: a drive, a shared workspace, and whatever the media agency uploaded into the ad account. Nobody deleted anything, which is precisely why nobody can find anything either.
The visible symptom is a brief that goes out asking for content the brand already owns. The invisible one is an ad account still serving a video whose licence ended nine months ago.
The four states an asset is in
Every file is in one of these, and the whole discipline is knowing which.
| State | How you can tell | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Usable | Written terms, still inside the period | Use it, and note when it expires |
| Expired | Terms exist, the date has passed | Stop running it, then decide whether to renew |
| Unknown | No record you can find | Treat as unusable until proven otherwise |
| Never cleared for this | Terms exist, this channel was not in them | Ask before it runs, not after |
The third row is where most libraries actually sit, and treating unknown as usable is the mistake that gets brands into disputes. A file you cannot evidence permission for is not an asset, it is a liability that happens to look like an asset.
The fourth row is more common than it sounds. A video licensed for organic social is not licensed for paid, for a retail screen or for a marketplace page, and none of those uses feel like a new decision to the person making them.
The record that makes this work
Not a system. A habit, and it costs about a minute per delivery.
When a file arrives, save alongside it the creator name, the date, what was agreed, where it may run, and when the permission ends. Five fields, in whatever your team already uses. The point is that the answer travels with the file rather than living in somebody's inbox.
Name the file so the answer is visible
If a filename carries the creator, the month and the expiry, half the questions disappear before anyone opens a spreadsheet. It is crude and it works, particularly in ad accounts where nobody will ever consult your documentation.
Put a date in the calendar, not in a document
An expiry that lives only in a record is an expiry nobody sees. A reminder six weeks before gives you time to renew at a normal price instead of an urgent one.
Renewing is cheaper than reshooting
This is the part that pays for the whole exercise.
A creator who filmed for you eighteen months ago will usually extend the licence on material that performs, for a fraction of the cost of commissioning again, and the extension takes a message rather than a production. Brands miss this because by the time anyone notices the video is old, nobody remembers who made it.
There is a second saving in the same place. Knowing what you already have prevents the brief that asks four creators to produce something close to a video sitting unused on a drive, which is the most common way marketing budget disappears in this category.
What to do with two years of mess
You do not need to audit everything, and attempting it is why this task never starts.
Begin with what is currently running: every asset live in an ad account, on a product page, on a retail screen or on the site. That set is small, it is where risk actually sits, and clearing it takes an afternoon.
Then apply the five field habit to everything new from today. The old material stays unknown until somebody wants to use it, at which point it gets checked once and either enters the library properly or does not.
That approach finishes. A full retrospective audit does not.
The assets contain people
A licence covers the footage. It does not, on its own, settle everything about the human being in it, and that is the part libraries handle worst.
The creator who asks you to stop
It happens: a change of career, a change of circumstances, occasionally a change of mind about being the face of a category. Whether you are obliged to act depends on what was signed, and the useful position is to have decided in advance what you will do anyway.
Brands that agree to pull material on request, within a stated period, lose very little and gain a reputation among creators that is worth more than any single video. Brands that refuse on principle end up arguing publicly with somebody the audience finds sympathetic.
The people who were never your supplier
Old creator footage is full of them: a friend who happened to be in shot, a member of staff who has since left, a customer who agreed on the day to something nobody wrote down.
They did not sign anything, they are not on your invoice, and they are the reason an old video is sometimes quietly unusable even though the creator licence is perfectly valid. When you audit what is running, look at who appears rather than only at who filmed it, because a face is the part somebody will recognise.
The UK specifics worth naming
Two things make this sharper here than elsewhere.
Paid media is where old material surfaces. A performing video gets pushed back into rotation long after its campaign ended, often by a media agency that never saw the original terms and had no reason to ask. Whoever manages your ad accounts needs the expiry information, and usually nobody has ever sent it to them.
The second is that advertising standards attach to the advertiser. If a claim in an old creator video is no longer accurate, or the disclosure no longer matches how the video is being used, that is the brand's responsibility rather than the creator's. An unmanaged library is therefore not only a wasted asset, it is a compliance surface that grows quietly.
Keep reading
- Improved by Everybody Who Saw It
- What Goes in the Box
- The Best Line in the Video Is the One You Will Have to Cut
- Somebody donated the money that is paying you
- The complete UGC guide for the UK
Frequently asked questions
How long should we license content for?
Long enough that you are not renewing constantly and short enough that creators can price it sensibly. What matters more than the length is that the end date exists and that somebody knows it.
Can we keep using a video after the licence ends?
No, and the fact that it is still in your ad account is not permission. Ask for an extension, which is usually straightforward, rather than assuming silence means yes.
Who should own the library?
Whoever runs the ad accounts, because they are the person whose decisions the record has to reach. Ownership by a marketing coordinator who never touches the media buying is how expiries go unseen.
Is it worth paying for asset management software?
Only after the habit exists. A team that cannot maintain five fields in a spreadsheet will not maintain them in an expensive tool either.
