How creative statuses work: planned to winner

ATIYO product documentation · Roadmaps · 6 min read

Every creative in ATIYO moves through a set of statuses on the Creative Roadmap. Each status answers one question: what needs to happen to this creative next? When your whole team agrees on what each status means, the board becomes a reliable source of truth instead of a pile of half-labeled cards. This article defines every status and tells you exactly when to move a creative forward.

New to the board? Start with what is the Creative Roadmap for the big picture, then come back here for the pipeline mechanics.

The seven statuses

The roadmap uses seven statuses that run in a natural order:

  1. Planned — the idea is captured but not yet briefed.
  2. Needs brief — approved to make, waiting on a written brief.
  3. Working — an editor is actively producing it.
  4. Ready to test — the creative is finished and approved.
  5. Testing — it is live in your ad account and gathering results.
  6. Winner — it outperformed and is worth scaling.
  7. Archived — it is done, retired, or set aside.

Planned

A planned creative is a concept you have decided is worth pursuing but have not yet detailed. This is where new ideas land after a brainstorm or when you spot a fresh angle in your Brand Bible. The card exists so the idea is not lost, but no one is expected to start production yet.

Move it forward to needs brief once the team agrees the concept is worth making.

Needs brief

Needs brief means the concept is approved but an editor cannot start because there is no clear request yet. This status is a signal to your strategist: write the brief. A good brief pins down the avatar, hook, core desire, angle, awareness level, and ad type so the editor is not guessing.

Move it forward to working the moment the brief is written and an editor picks it up.

If cards pile up in needs brief, your pipeline is briefing-bound, not editing-bound. That is a scheduling problem for strategists, and the board makes it obvious at a glance.

Working

Working means an editor is actively producing the creative. Files are being cut, assembled, and uploaded to the Vault, where reviewers can leave timecoded comments and approve versions. A card should have an assignee while it is in working so it is clear who owns the edit.

Move it forward to ready to test once the edit is complete and any review comments in the Vault are resolved.

Ready to test

Ready to test is a staging status. The creative is finished and approved but not yet live. This is your launch queue: the pool of creatives waiting to go into your ad account. Keeping this column healthy means you always have something new to test, which is the single biggest driver of a strong win rate.

Move it forward to testing when you launch the creative wherever you run your ads.

Testing

Testing means the creative is live and gathering results. ATIYO does not connect to your ad account, so you decide when a test has run long enough and whether it passed based on your own performance data. The roadmap tracks that the test is happening and who owns watching it; your ad platform tells you how it performed.

Move it forward to winner if it beat your benchmark, or to archived if it did not.

ATIYO has no ad-platform integration and does not track spend, ROAS, or CPA. Read those numbers in your ad manager, then record the outcome on the roadmap by setting the status.

Winner

A winner is a creative that outperformed your benchmark and deserves more investment. Winners are gold: they tell you which avatar, angle, and hook combination resonates. Use each winner as a springboard, spinning up new planned cards for variations so you can scale the concept.

Winners also feed your Insights, where win rate and winner counts are tracked over time and can be exported to CSV.

Archived

Archived keeps your board clean. Send creatives here when a test did not pan out, when a concept is retired, or when a winner has run its course. Archived cards stay searchable, so nothing is truly lost, but they no longer clutter your active columns.

Reading the shape of your pipeline

Because statuses run in order, the distribution of cards tells a story:

  • Lots of planned, few testing — you have ideas but a production bottleneck.
  • Empty ready to test — your launch queue is dry and testing will stall soon.
  • Growing winner column — your process is working; scale those concepts.

Changing a status

  1. Open the roadmap.
  2. Drag a card to a new column, or open the card and pick a status.
  3. To move several at once, select multiple cards and apply a bulk status change.

Next steps

To move many cards through statuses quickly, read updating creatives in bulk. To focus on just the cards in a given stage, see filtering and searching your roadmap.

Related articles

What is the Creative Roadmap in ATIYO?An overview of the Creative Roadmap: the pipeline board where your team tracks every ad creative from idea to tested winner. Updating creatives in bulk on the roadmapHow to select multiple cards and apply bulk status changes on the roadmap to move whole batches of creatives at once. Filtering and searching your creative roadmapHow to use search and filters, including status, awareness level, ad type, and my-queue, to find exactly the creatives you need on the roadmap.
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