Activation & operations
Media activation
Media activation is the translation of an approved plan into live campaigns: building the structures in each platform, applying budgets, audiences, bids, schedules and tracking exactly as planned. It is where most preventable budget errors are either introduced or caught.
In practice
Activation QA - a two-person check of budget type, currency, dates, bid strategy, audience, geography and tracking - is the cheapest insurance in media operations.
Changes made directly in platforms without updating the plan quietly break the pacing baseline; the plan must remain the source of truth.