Ad Lightning's ad intelligence tools help Publishers monitor and manage ad quality on their sites. Publishers can quickly and easily flag problematic ads that violate creative specs or contain suspicious/malicious code.
Ads that have been flagged by a Publisher will appear the Partner Report. Partner Reports are intended to be a two-way communication between a Publisher and their Network/Exchange/SSP Partner(s) to help expedite the ad removal/blocking process by the Network/Exchange/SSP. The report URL provided is a permanent link that will always be available.
Here's how they work:
Step 1: A Publisher's Exchange, Network or SSP partner will receive a report URL either via email from the Publisher or from an Ad Lightning alert notification.
Step 2: Partners review the ads in the report grid to get an overview of what has been reported. The black and red dots in the metric columns indicate why each creative has been flagged. Black denotes a "critical" violation.
Step 3: Partners access additional information, including the HTML, for the offending creatives in the details modal view. All of the data necessary to locate and block an ad from appearing on this Publisher's site should be available.
Step 4: Partner's confirm that the ad(s) have been removed by selecting "Mark as Resolved" within the grid. If you have received an alert notifying you of new ads in the report, you can use the filter in the top left to only view "Unresolved" ads. If the ad is unable to be resolved, you can select additional options from the drop down menu, including: Passback, Missing Information, In Progress or Unable to Resolve. These statuses will be visible to the Publisher in the UI so that they can take additional steps if needed.
Step-By-Step Tour
The Ad Grid
Publishers will add offending creatives to the report within the Ad Lightning interface. The list of ads that have been flagged will appear chronologically in the report list. The red & black scores denote the severity of a given violation, with the lower scores being more egregious. The red/black dots within the metrics columns indicate which thresholds were in violation of a Publisher's acceptance thresholds.
In the example below, the first ad was flagged for being 15MB, making 565 requests and firing almost 260 trackers.
In addition to measuring and scoring the ad attributes, Ad Lightning captures all of the HTML & associated resources for each ad. The information can be found by clicking on the icons at the end of each row.
Additional Information:
Clicking on the icons will pop open a modal with additional information about a specific ad. Details include a visual summary, list of resources and the HTML. This should contain all of the information needed to locate an ad in a given system for removal. If there is additional information you'd like Ad Lightning to surface, please reach out to us via the chat function or by emailing support@adlightning.com.
Ad Lightning will also display the daisy chain or waterfall detected from the page code. This is intended to provide additional insight into where a given ad originated in hopes of quickly identifying the required blocking data.
If an ad contains malware or initiated an unwanted redirect, the additional information will also be available in this view.
Closing the Loop
Once an ad has been blocked from within the Exchange, Network or SSP, the Partner will select the appropriate status in the "Change Status..." drop down in the report.
This action creates a timestamp that allows the Publisher to confirm an ad has been removed or viewed and also provide details should it appear again. Users can filter by "Resolved"/"Unresolved" in the top left.
Questions or need help? Email support@adlightning.com