Media Buying
Affidavit
A formalized, notarized statement accompanying a station's invoice, legally verifying that the commercial aired at the exact times specified.
What is Affidavit?
An Affidavit of Performance is the station's formal certification — often notarized — that it has delivered exactly what the advertiser paid for. Every aired spot, its precise airtime, and its program adjacency are documented. Affidavits are a legal requirement for co-op reimbursement, political advertising, and many large national buys where the advertiser needs auditable proof of delivery.
Affidavits are only as trustworthy as the underlying station logs that generate them. Independent, real-time monitoring — exactly what Spotwise does — provides an external verification layer. A station cannot overstate its delivery in an affidavit if a third-party monitor is logging the same airwaves in parallel. This is why broadcast monitoring has become table stakes for any serious ad-buying organization.
Why it matters
Advanced AI monitoring tools like Spotwise essentially act as independent, real-time verifiers of competitor affidavits, ensuring market transparency.
Related terms
- Co-op Advertising (Co-operative)— An arrangement where a major product manufacturer financially subsidizes the advertising costs of a local retailer promoting their specific product.
- Adjacency— An advertising pod positioned immediately next to a specific, high-value program feature, such as a weather report or sports update.
- OES (Optimum Effective Scheduling)— A mathematical scheduling strategy explicitly designed to reach a majority of a station's audience three or more times within a single week.
- Spot Television— Denotes all available commercial advertising time available for purchase from a local television station, encompassing both local and national spots.