Functioning Landing Page
Every ad links somewhere. Advalidation follows the click-through URL and verifies the landing page actually works before the campaign goes live.
Why landing page validation matters
A broken landing page wastes the impression. The ad rendered, the viewer clicked, and then nothing: a 404 page, a redirect loop, or an unresolved ad server macro in the URL. The advertiser loses a conversion opportunity and the publisher gets a complaint.
Landing page issues are common because click-through URLs pass through multiple systems. Ad servers insert tracking macros, redirects chain through measurement vendors, and the final destination may have changed since the creative was built. Any link in that chain can break.
What Advalidation checks
For every creative, Advalidation extracts the click-through URL and follows it through the full redirect chain to the final destination. The check verifies:
- HTTP status: The final page returns a 200 OK, not a 404, 500, or other error
- Redirect chain: All intermediate redirects resolve successfully
- Unresolved macros: Ad server macros like `${CLICK_URL}` or `[timestamp]` that weren't replaced appear as literal text in the URL, causing it to break
- SSL: The landing page loads over HTTPS without certificate errors
- Response time: The page responds within a reasonable timeout
Common issues caught
- Expired campaign pages: The advertiser took down the landing page but the creative is still running
- Macro errors: Click trackers with unresolved macros produce malformed URLs that return errors
- Redirect chains: Too many redirects or a redirect pointing to a dead URL
- Regional blocks: Landing pages that return different responses based on geography
- HTTP to HTTPS: Mixed content issues where the click URL uses HTTP but the destination requires HTTPS
Display and video creatives
Landing page validation works for both display and video creatives. For display ads, Advalidation extracts the click-through URL from the creative's click handler. For VAST tags, it checks the ClickThrough URL declared in the VAST XML.
For VAST tags with multiple variations, each variation's click-through URL is validated independently since different creatives in rotation may link to different landing pages.
Catch changes after launch
Landing pages can break mid-campaign. An advertiser updates their site, a redirect expires, or a CDN has an outage. Use Campaign Monitoring to continuously validate landing pages throughout the campaign lifecycle.