Claims and compliance
Are you allowed to use that photo in a paid advert?
Organic permission is not paid permission, a stock licence is not a model release, and the 17 rights a campaign asset actually needs.
How MarketWar handles it
17 separate rights are checked before an asset can run — among them source ownership, upload permission, music licence, model release, voice and face consent, location release, product trademark, territory, permitted platforms, PAID-AD rights as distinct from organic-only rights, modification rights, generative-AI rights and expiry — and publishing is BLOCKED whenever any right required for the intended use is missing. The engine never assumes consent.
There is a question every small business gets wrong at least once: can I use this picture?
It feels like one question. It is seventeen, and they fail independently.
The ones that catch people
Organic permission is not paid permission. A customer who is delighted for you to post their kitchen on Instagram has not agreed to appear in an advert you are paying to put in front of strangers. In most jurisdictions those are different permissions, and the second one needs asking for.
A stock licence is not a model release. You licensed the photograph from the library. The person in it agreed to be photographed under terms you have never seen, which frequently exclude unlimited paid social, endorsement-shaped use, or certain territories.
Music is its own problem, twice. The recording and the composition are separate rights, and "it was fine on the platform's own library" means fine on that platform only.
A territory is a right. A licence for the UK is not a licence for a campaign you let run globally because the platform defaulted to it.
An expired right looks exactly like a valid one. This is the quiet one. Nothing in your folder changes when a three-year release lapses.
Generative-AI rights usually do not exist in older paperwork. If you want to restyle or animate an asset, somebody has to have agreed to that. Consents written before 2023 are silent, and silence is not permission.
What the check actually does
Seventeen fields, and the rule is one sentence: publishing is blocked whenever any right required for the intended use is missing.
The phrase doing the work is for the intended use. A photo can be perfectly fine for your website and blocked for a paid advert in another country, from the same record, because the use changed and the requirements changed with it.
And the default is refusal, not assumption. The engine never assumes consent — an unknown field is treated as absent, because the alternative is a system that lets everything through until somebody complains.
Why a blocker rather than a warning
A warning is read once, by somebody in a hurry, at the moment they most want to publish. Every tool that has ever shown a rights warning has watched it be clicked past.
The cost asymmetry is the argument. Blocking costs you a delay and an email asking for permission. Publishing without the right costs you a takedown at best, and at worst a claim from somebody whose face you used to sell something.
The practical habit
Ask for paid-advert permission at the moment somebody sends you the photo, in writing, with a time limit, and record it. It takes one message, and it is the difference between an asset library you can advertise with and a folder you have to re-clear every time.
If you are generating creative from your own material, the ad canvas works from a photo you took — which is the one case where the rights question is simple.
The question to ask
Before any asset runs as a paid advert: who is in it, who shot it, what did they agree to, for how long, and where?
If any of those five has no answer, you have found the one to chase.
What this does not do
It checks what you have told it and what the asset carries. It cannot find a release you never obtained, and it will not tell you a customer's photo is safe to use in a paid advert because they were happy for you to post it.
Common questions
A customer sent me a photo and said I could post it. Can I run it as an advert?
Usually not without asking again. Permission to post organically is not permission to use somebody's likeness in paid advertising, and those are two separate rights here for exactly that reason.
I bought a stock image. Am I covered?
For the image, within the licence. A stock licence is not a model release, rarely covers unlimited paid social, and often excludes territories. Those are separate fields because they fail separately.
What is a generative-AI right?
Whether you are permitted to feed the asset to a model — to restyle, extend or animate it. Many licences and consents granted before 2023 say nothing about it, and silence is not permission.
Why does expiry matter?
Because an expired right looks identical to a valid one in your asset folder. A three-year model release that lapsed in March does not announce itself; the check does.
Related
Can you legally say that in an advert?
Best in the area, guaranteed results, clinically proven — which marketing claims need evidence you can produce, and what happens to the ones that do not.
How do you make an ad from your own photos?
Your own photographs beat generated artwork for most small firms. They need one thing: the copy has to stay readable over them.
How do you ask for reviews without breaking the rules?
When to ask, what to say, where to send them, and why filtering out the unhappy ones breaks the rules and costs more than a bad review.