What counts as a revision round, and the approval workflow that makes two of them enough

A round is one consolidated list from one owner, answered in one delivery. Everything else is a conversation you are paying for. Here is the definition, the contract language, the workflow that keeps two rounds sufficient, and what a third should cost.

Buying creative in the US/By Badal Kariwal/Oct 14, 2026/Updated Sep 03, 2026/9 min read

Two white sun loungers with red cushions beside a hotel pool, an umbrella furled between them

What is in here

What counts as a revision round?
The board before any frame is what makes two rounds enough
How many revision rounds should an agency include?
What turns a round into a conversation
What should a third round cost?
How do you run a round so it lands in one delivery?

The short answer

A revision round is one consolidated list of changes, from one named person, answered in one delivery. Two lists sent four hours apart are two rounds, or they are one round the studio has agreed to reopen, and the contract should say which. Most agency contracts do not define a round at all, which is how a fixed fee turns into an hourly one somewhere around week three.

What you get out of this

A definition of a revision round you can paste into a contract, and the clauses that make it enforceable
Why approving a written board before any frame exists is what makes two rounds sufficient
What three executed creative agreements give a client to review a cut, and what silence means in each
The test that separates a revision from new scope, before it becomes an invoice argument

You are three weeks into a batch, on what somebody is calling round two, and you have lost count of how many versions have been delivered. Nobody is behaving badly. The list came in pieces, two people wanted opposite things on the same shot, and the studio kept saying yes. What went missing was a revision policy, and its absence costs both sides the same amount.

Where the two rounds sit in the order of work

The shape of it

00Briefa link, the product, and what the ad has to do

01Direction boardhook, beats, cuts and sound, written before a frame is madeYou approve the board

02First cutthe finished film, delivered inside 72 hours of the brief

03Round oneone consolidated list, one delivery backRound one

04Round twosame shape, and the last one included in the planRound two

This is the house order, in the words we use on the homepage: brief, written direction board, finished cuts, two revision rounds. The gate that matters is the first one. Every correction made on the board costs a sentence, and the same correction made on a finished cut costs a render.

01What counts as a revision round?

One consolidated list, from one named approver, answered in one delivery. The list arrives complete rather than in installments, its items do not contradict each other, and the studio replies with a single new version rather than a running conversation. That is the definition, and almost no creative contract contains it. AIGA's own proposal guidance tells a studio to state "the number of revisions or refinements that are included", and then leaves the word revision undefined. That is where the argument starts.

Contract language for a revision round

Take it

REVISION ROUNDS

1. "Revision Round" means one consolidated written list of requested
   changes, submitted by the Client Approver, answered by Studio in a
   single revised Deliverable.

2. The Client Approver is one named individual. Studio may decline to
   act on notes received from anyone else until the Client Approver
   has consolidated them.

3. A list submitted in parts is one Revision Round only if all parts
   are received before Studio begins work on it. Parts received after
   work has begun are the next Revision Round.

4. Two [2] Revision Rounds per Deliverable are included in the Fee.

5. A request that changes the approved Direction Board, rather than
   the execution of it, is not a Revision Round. It is new scope, and
   is quoted before work begins.

6. Studio will state, on delivery, which Revision Round has been
   consumed and how many remain.

7. Changes required for legal or regulatory compliance are actioned
   outside the Revision Round count.

8. Client will submit each consolidated list within [5] business
   days of delivery. Studio holds the batch until it arrives, and
   silence does not constitute acceptance.

Paste it into the statement of work rather than the master agreement, because the round count changes per project and the definition does not. Clause 3 is the one buyers forget and the one that stops a round from splitting in two. Clause 5 is the studio's protection and it is fair: without it, a fixed fee has no floor.

Two things make that definition worth its paragraph. One is countability: a round you can count is a round you can price, and a round nobody counts is a fee with no floor. The other is that it moves the argument forward in time. What a plan should name alongside the round count - deliverables, native sizes, turnaround, ownership, pause and exit - is in what a creative retainer includes.

02The board before any frame is what makes two rounds enough

Two rounds is a generous number when the direction was agreed on paper and a cruel one when it was not. Before anything is generated, the brief becomes a written board: the hook, the beats, the cuts, and what the sound is doing in each window. You read that and say yes or no to it. Every disagreement that surfaces there costs a sentence to fix. The same disagreement surfacing on a finished cut costs a render, a re-grade and a day.

The same note, arriving at three different stages

One panel per stage

Before a frame exists

The board is a written document: hook, beats, cuts, and what the sound is doing in each window. A note here changes a sentence, and everything downstream is built from the corrected sentence.

This is the review most buyers skip, because a document feels less real than a film. It is the only stage where changing your mind is free.

What a change costs: A sentence
Who has to be present: The real decision-maker
Counts as a round: No

One note, three arrival times, three prices. Nothing here is about how hard the note is to execute. It is about how much work already depends on the thing the note changes. The cheapest review you will ever run is the one on a document with no pictures in it.

The production argument for paper first belongs to the sister journal, and it reaches the same rule from the other side: the stage you approve at is the stage every correction happens at. If you sent a reference film with the brief, that file is doing more work than the words around it. The reference video is the specification, and a board should read as a shot-by-shot answer to it rather than a mood.

Six things people call a revision, and what each one really is

Flip them

The distinction on every card is the same one: does the request change the execution of an approved direction, or does it change the direction? The first is a round. The second is a new board, and pretending otherwise is how a studio ends up doing free work badly and a client ends up with a fourth version of something nobody chose.

03How many revision rounds should an agency include?

Between one and two, and the number matters less than the window attached to it. A video production agreement filed with the SEC in 2015 includes exactly one round and gives the client 24 hours: "If Client has not responded within 24 hours of delivery, such new scripts will be deemed approved." A published agency master agreement gives three business days before a deliverable is deemed accepted. An enterprise agreement from 2023 gives ten business days to inspect, two for the agency to cure, and no deemed acceptance at all.

What a client gets to review a deliverable

Three executed agreements, read September 3, 2026

24 hoursthen scripts and videos are deemed approved, in a video production agreement filed with the SEC in 2015SEC EDGAR, Coolfire Studios agreement

3 business daysto reject a deliverable in writing, in a published agency master creative services agreement, after which it is deemed acceptedEvolv Branding, master creative services agreement

10 business daysto inspect, with two business days for the agency to cure, in an enterprise creative agreement filed in 2023SEC EDGAR, Hasbro and RAD Technologies agreement

5-10 daysthe acceptance window the AIGA standard form tells a studio to setAIGA Standard Form of Agreement, 2022 update

All three are public documents: two filed with the SEC and one published by the agency itself. The fourth figure is the guidance AIGA gives studios writing their own terms. Read the spread as a warning rather than a benchmark: these are four different products, and a ten-business-day acceptance window and a 72-hour turnaround promise cannot live in the same contract.

In two of the three agreements I read, saying nothing is how you approve something.
The deemed-acceptance clauses in the executed agreements read for this piece

Four sets of terms, on the five questions that decide a round

Compare

Four sets of terms, on the five questions that decide a round
Dimension	Ephoria plan	Filed video production agreement, 2015	Published agency master agreement	Enterprise creative agreement, 2023
Rounds included	Yes. Two per batch, every plan	Partly. One, on scripts and on finished videos	Partly. Not stated as a count	Partly. Not stated as a count
Client review window	No deadline imposed on you; the 72 hours is our clock	24 hours	3 business days	10 business days
What silence means	No. Nothing. We wait, and the batch waits with you	Yes. Deemed approved	Yes. Deemed accepted	No. No deemed-acceptance clause
Change of direction after approval	New board, quoted before work begins	Beyond scope, may incur additional fees	New project order once changes approach half the time required	Not addressed as a separate mechanism
Fixing a deliverable that misses spec	Round one is the cure, and it is included	Not addressed separately	Written notice of the failure to comply, inside the same three business days	Two business days for the agency to cure

Every column except ours is read off a public document on September 3, 2026 and linked in the sources. Ours is the plan as the homepage states it. The row worth arguing over is the fourth: two of these four treat any change of direction after approval as new work, and the two that do not are the two that never state a round count at all.

04What turns a round into a conversation

Four things, and only one of them is anybody's fault. Notes arrive through three channels, so no version of the list is complete. Two people send contradicting notes and the studio picks one, which means somebody is going to be surprised. A note describes a feeling instead of a frame. And a change of direction arrives dressed as a fix, because saying "we changed our minds" out loud feels expensive.

The fourth is the expensive one, and nobody does it on purpose. A change of mind arrives as a defect report - the shot feels slow, the music is wrong, the opening does not land - and the studio answers it as a defect, spends a round, and delivers something still not right. The board tells both sides which conversation they are in.

Is this a revision or new scope?

Answer two questions

The test is the approved board every time. This is not a way to refuse work: a studio that says no to a direction change is a bad studio. It is a way to get the change priced and scheduled before anyone starts, instead of discovered when a deadline has already moved.

05What should a third round cost?

Ask before you need one, because the published answers differ. The AIGA standard form of agreement prices out-of-scope work on time and materials at a stated hourly rate, and lets the studio re-open the fee once changes approach a stated share of the time required. One published master agreement fills that blank in at fifty percent. Both are reasonable. An undefined policy is the version that costs you, because the price gets set after the work instead of before it.

What I do, said as an opinion rather than a termI treat a third round as evidence the board was wrong rather than a line item to sell. The useful question is which sentence on the board was ambiguous, because it will be ambiguous on the next batch too. Two rounds are in the plan; what happens after them is a conversation about the board.

06How do you run a round so it lands in one delivery?

Collect everything before you send anything. The mechanics of writing a note that survives a night - timestamps, one owner, one list, a priority on each item - are their own subject and they live in async creative feedback that lands in one round, with the vocabulary for naming what is wrong in how to review AI creative when you are not a video person. What follows is the procurement half: the sequence that keeps a round countable, so the word in your contract and the thing that happens on your project are the same thing.

Running a round from the buyer's side

Walk it

Step 1

Name the approver before the cut arrives

One person, named in writing in the statement of work, with the authority to say no. Everyone else sends notes to that person rather than to the studio.

This is the single change that recovers the most calendar time on a batch, and it costs nothing to make. It also decides who answers when two stakeholders want opposite things, the failure that quietly eats a round.

Step 2

Collect for a fixed window, then close it

Give stakeholders until a stated hour. Anything after that hour is the next round, and saying so in advance is what makes it true.

A window that everyone knows about produces better notes than an open door, because people write once instead of thinking out loud.

Step 3

Resolve the contradictions yourself

If two notes point in opposite directions, the studio will pick one and somebody will be surprised. Decide before you send.

Where you cannot decide, say so explicitly and ask for two options. That is a legitimate use of a round.

Step 4

Check every item against the approved board

Items the board covers are revisions. Items the board contradicts are new scope. Mark them, and send the second group as a question rather than an instruction.

This takes about five minutes and it is the whole difference between a round and an argument.

Step 5

Send once, and ask for the count back

One message, one list. Ask the studio to confirm on delivery which round has been consumed and how many remain.

GitLab's handbook puts the general version of this well: an answer should come back with a deadline or a done, because "will do" is not information.

1 / 5

Five steps, and the first one is where rounds get lost. A list that goes out in pieces is not a round in any contract I read for this piece, and the studio that quietly absorbs the pieces is the one that will be short a round when you need it.

Before you send the list

Tick as you go - it remembers

One sender. The list goes from the named approver, in one message, on one channel.No contradictions left in it. Two notes on the same shot have been reconciled before sending, not after.Every item is a moment or a fact. Something a person can point at, refuse, or execute without a follow-up question.Direction changes are flagged as questions. Anything the approved board does not cover goes in a separate list, marked as a quote request.The list is complete when it leaves. If a stakeholder is still watching, wait. Half a list starts a round you cannot finish.Compliance and legal changes are marked. They should sit outside the round count, and the contract should say so.The round number is stated. Say which round this is and expect confirmation of how many remain on delivery.Nothing in it is a taste word on its own. Premium, aspirational, cleaner and punchier are all fine in a sentence that also names a frame, and useless alone.It is going to the channel named in the contract. A note in a direct message is a note nobody can count, quote or find again in March.

Nine checks, five minutes. Two of them are the ones buyers skip and then resent: a studio cannot count rounds you have not told it you are counting, and it cannot execute an adjective.

One last piece of sequencing. The round policy, the review window and the turnaround promise are one clock read from three ends, so settle all three in the same conversation. The calendar version of that clock is in your first ninety days with a creative studio, the forms behind the signature are in the vendor paperwork a studio hands finance, and the case for a paid pilot over a proposal round is in how to hire a creative studio without running an RFP.

Questions people actually ask

Open what you need

What is included in one round of revisions?

One consolidated list of changes, from one named approver, answered by the studio in a single revised deliverable. Sending the list in installments splits it into two rounds unless everything arrives before work starts. The definition is worth writing into the statement of work, because AIGA's standard template tells studios to state how many revisions are included and never defines what one is, and most contracts inherit that gap.

What is a direction board in a creative project?

A written document, delivered before anything is generated, that states the hook, the beats, the cuts and what the sound is doing in each window. It is the thing you approve, and it is what a revision round is measured against afterwards. Its practical function is to move disagreement to the only stage where changing your mind costs a sentence instead of a render, which is what makes a two-round policy workable rather than mean.

Is two rounds of revisions enough?

It is enough when the direction was agreed in writing before anything was made, and it is not when the first thing you see is a finished film. A written board covering the hook, beats, cuts and sound moves every direction argument to a stage where a correction costs a sentence. Without that stage, the first cut becomes the board, and the two rounds get spent discovering what the ad was supposed to be.

Is a new headline a revision or a new project?

A revision if the approved board's message is unchanged and the line is an execution of it. New scope if the board said one thing and the headline now says another, because everything downstream of the line was built to serve the old one. The published agreements handle this the same way under different names: out of scope, additional fees, or a new project order once changes approach half the time required.

What happens if we miss the review window?

Read your contract, because in two of the three executed agreements read for this piece, silence is approval. One gives 24 hours before scripts and videos are deemed approved and another gives three business days before a deliverable is deemed accepted. A third gives ten business days and has no deemed-acceptance clause. Under a 72-hour turnaround promise, a missed window mostly costs you a day of calendar rather than a right.

Can you get unlimited revisions from a creative agency?

Several subscription studios advertise unlimited revisions, and the constraint moves rather than disappearing: what is capped instead is throughput, usually one active request or one output a day. Unlimited revisions on a queue of one means your second project waits while your first is refined. Count finished assets per month against the round policy together, because either one alone can be made to look generous. The arithmetic for turning any quote into one comparable number is in cost per finished ad.

Who should approve creative on the client side?

One named person with the authority to say no, who has read the direction board before the work started. The title matters less than the sequence: an approver who first sees the project at the finished-cut stage will produce direction changes disguised as revisions, and no round policy survives that. If the founder is the real decision-maker, the founder reads the board.

Count rounds by lists, not by versions. A studio that has sent four files against one list has given you one round, and a studio that has sent one file against four messages has given you four. The version count is what everybody watches, and it tells you least.

Why this studio

If the problem on this page is yours, this is the studio that fixes it.

Built, not brokered. The person who wrote this reads your brief and makes the ad: over a thousand finished creatives, film and stills, for DTC brands and hotels.
Fast enough to test. A first cut inside 72 hours, platform-native and built from your own product, then a monthly plan when you want a steady supply, and a number in the reply.
Honest about the odds. We measure and publish our own keep rate: 43% of what clears every automated check survives our eye, and you only ever see the survivors.

Get one ad free See the work See the plans

See the board before you buy the rounds

Send a link to your product. You get the board first, then a finished ad, free.

The first ad costs nothing and comes with the same written direction board a paying batch gets, so you can find out whether our notes and yours meet on paper before there is a contract to argue about. Yours to run either way.

Badal Kariwal

Runs Ephoria, an ad-creative studio, and builds the work himself: over a thousand finished creatives, film and stills, for DTC brands and hotels. Writes here about what buying and making ad creative involves, in dollars and in days, including where the studio loses. The person who reads your brief is the person who builds the ad. Send him something to make, or see the studio's work and plans.

Where the numbers came from

AIGA. Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, 2022 update - read 2026-09-03; the proposal guidance to state the number of creative directions and the number of revisions included, clause 4.1 pricing out-of-scope work at a stated hourly rate, clause 4.2's re-open right when changes approach a stated percentage of the time required, and the acceptance-window guidance of usually 5 to 10 days
US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR. Video Production Agreement, Coolfire Studios, LLC and Global Personalized Academics, July 21, 2015 - read 2026-09-03; one round of revisions on scripts and on videos, a 24-hour client review window, deemed approval on silence, and post-approval direction changes treated as out of scope
Evolv Branding Advertising and Marketing. Master Creative Services Agreement with ATG Industrial Automation - read 2026-09-03; clause 4.5 gives the client three business days to reject a deliverable in writing before it is deemed accepted, and clause 4.3 lets the agency issue a new project order once changes approach fifty percent of the time required
US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR. Creative services agreement, Hasbro, Inc. and RAD Technologies Inc., August 28, 2023 - read 2026-09-03; ten business days for the client to inspect a deliverable and two business days for the agency to cure a non-conformity, with no deemed-acceptance clause
GitLab. Handbook, Communication (source markdown in the handbook repository) - read 2026-09-03; the acknowledgement rule that an answer should carry a deadline or a done, and the instruction to write low-context and explicitly across distance. The rendered handbook page refuses automated fetches, so the source markdown was read instead

Every figure above links to the place it was published, with the date it was read. Numbers marked as ours are measured inside this studio and we say so where they appear. We do not print a statistic we cannot point at.