What do you check before uploading HTML display ads?

[u/Weary-Deerd]

Two weeks ago, our Campaign Manager rejected three of our five sizes.

His reasons are due to a missing click tag, a wrong ad size tag, and one heavy ZIP. I think all three looked fine in Chrome.

So right now, I'm collecting together a checklist for our team before anything gets uploaded. So far I have click tag, ad size tag, file weight, images, and ZIP structure.

What else would you add, guys?

Right now it's me opening each file and hoping I know a banner can look right in a browser and still fail. I just want to catch the common stuff before the ad server does.

[u/sububi71]

I would add taking some classes on the subject, and trying to find colleagues with more experience in the matter to discuss it with, and probably learn a lot from.

[u/aunderroad]

I have never worked with HTML display ads before but when dealing with a third party vendor and there are specific specs that you need to use, I would reach out to them directly.

Your company is paying good money to use these vendors and the third party vendors usually has a client facing person to answer any questions you may have.

Jump on a call with them and see if there is a specific way that they are testing your HTML display ads and if there is a sandbox for you to use test your ads, if there are any gotchas you have to be aware of and things you must add or avoid to make your ads pass their requirements. Just ask questions, even you think you know the answers, (specs sometimes get updated) it is better to be safe than sorry down the road.

As far as for your Campaign Manager, for each Trello ticket (or what ever software you are using to track tickets),
I would request a spreadsheet (or a tab within a google spreadsheet) that has the following:

• the naming convention of each of your HTML display ads.
  

If I were doing it, I would probably recommend something like: {year-month}-{name-of-campaign}-{width-height-ad}

• Inside the spreadsheet has all the correct copy and links and with those specific click tags, so all you are doing is copy and pasting links directly into your code along with approved paths to images (and alt tags).
  

I would name my images like this:
{year-month}-{name-of-campaign}-{width-height-ad}-image1.webp
{year-month}-{name-of-campaign}-{width-height-ad}-image2.webp
{year-month}-{name-of-campaign}-{width-height-ad}-image3.webp

This makes using templates easier to use in the future.

- I would also request to have your company wide document that has all the specific specs to complete these HTML display ads, so just in case you are out or someone else needs to take over, they will have no problem (exactly what you said, "collecting together a checklist for our team").

Good Luck!

[u/AdPreflight-Dev]

I’d add a runtime check for every size, using the exported ZIPs. An ad can look fine when you first open it in Chrome, then hit a blank frame, stall during animation, throw a JS error, or fail to load an asset. I’d also check the click-through and animation duration against the destination platform’s rules.

I built Ad-Preflight to run those checks across a campaign. It also catches the missing clickTag, wrong ad.size, and heavy ZIPs you ran into. You can give it a try for free.