Features
How GoAdScanner works
You decide what to scan, from where, on which devices and how often. GoAdScanner runs the scans on its own servers, separate from ad serving, and writes a report for every item it scans.
Watch a real scan
One minute, one real scan: a bad ad caught in the act, and the report that proves it.
What you can scan
Each scan task has one target.
Campaign ads
The ads of your active campaigns, one ad type per task. Narrow it down with allowed or skipped advertisers.
SmartZone networks
The ad codes of the outside networks connected to your SmartZones: what they really serve on your placements.
RTB landing pages
The landing pages of winning RTB bids, for the campaigns you switch on, replayed as they served. See below.
Items you add
A piece of HTML code, a URL or a VAST URL. Handy for checking a new tag or an offer before it runs.
Three scan types
Ad scan
Renders the creative and checks what it does on the page.
URL scan
Follows a URL and its redirect chain to the final landing page.
VAST video scan
Loads a VAST tag, follows the wrapper chain to the media file and the click-through, and checks what they call.
Scan like a real visitor
Malicious ads target. A redirect may only fire for phones in one country, or only in one browser, and show a clean page to everyone else. So every task decides how the scanner arrives:
- Location proxy: scans run through IP addresses in the countries you pick, with Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 quick picks.
- Devices and browsers: desktop, tablet, mobile, console, wearable and TV, from desktop Chrome, Firefox and Edge to specific phones, tablets, consoles and smart TVs.
- Random browser per scan: rotate profiles instead of scanning with one fixed setup.
- Schedule: daily, hourly or every minute, with the number of scans per interval. Every minute is meant for short investigations.
If a country proxy can’t be reached, the report says Proxy Unavailable, so you never mistake a scan from the wrong country for a clean one.
More in the manual: Setting up scan tasks.
Ads on the landing page, scanned too
A clean ad can still send your visitor to a page full of bad ones. With Scan Landing Page Ads switched on, GoAdScanner does not stop at the page an ad or link leads to: it scans the ads on that page as well.
- It behaves like a reader: it scrolls down the page and starts the video player, so a pre-roll ad shows up too.
- It clicks the ads it finds, up to the number you set (1 to 10, default 5), and scans where each one leads.
- Every ad gets its own entry in the report: its creative, its click destination and what happened there, with a link to that ad’s full scan.
It works on the page a URL scan opens and on the landing page an ad scan reaches after its click. Each ad scanned this way adds to the work of the scan, so keep the number low on tasks that run often.
More in the manual: Landing Page Ads in a report.
RTB landing pages
An RTB ad comes from the bidder at the moment of the auction and is never stored on your side. So GoAdserver’s ad servers record the landing page of each winning bid, with the country, device, operating system, browser and publisher site it served on, for every campaign that is switched on for scanning. No visitor IP is stored.
The scanner then opens each recorded page through a proxy in the country it served in, on the closest matching browser profile, with the real publisher site as referrer, because landing pages often show a clean version to visitors from elsewhere. Pages seen recently go first; old ones are skipped, since an expired tracking link lands on a fallback page that would scan clean.
When a report shows a problem, staff can refuse bids from that source. The ad servers apply it within 5 minutes. Nothing is ever blocked automatically: you decide.
Limits, honestly: nothing is recorded until a campaign is switched on; video RTB bids are not covered, because their click-through sits inside the VAST document; and CPM, flat-rate and direct-deal campaigns are not part of the RTB target.
More in the manual: Scanning RTB landing pages.
What a scan report shows
- A verdict: Threats Detected, Potentially Unwanted Activity or No Threats Detected.
- A screenshot of the ad, and of what happened after the click.
- Every flagged event with its type and URL.
- Each domain’s reputation (malicious, suspicious, harmless or undetected) from the threat-intelligence sources the scanner checks.
- The full navigation tree: redirects, sub-requests and cookies.
- For video: the VAST wrapper chain and the media file.
- The scan context: country, device, browser and referrer, plus the bandwidth used.
The report opens at its own address, without a login, so you can send it to the network or advertiser that served the ad.
More in the manual: Reading a scan report.
After the scan
Overview
Scans, scans with issues, clean scans and issue rate for the period, activity over time, top countries and the most flagged items.
Reports and stats
Every scan with time, task, item, user agent, country, issues and bandwidth, filterable by task, status, country and device; totals per day or task.
Domain Check
Enter an advertiser’s ad domain and see on which of your ad zones the scanner saw it, how often and when last.
Alerts
Serious findings only, or any finding, by email, Telegram or your notification channels.
Ignore list
Trust a domain and the task stops reporting it. One click undoes it.
Your choice of checks
Switch each detection on or off per task, from push and pop-ups to fingerprinting and permission requests.
Start scanning your ads
GoAdScanner is part of GoAdserver. Tell us what you want to scan and we switch it on for your platform, or read the full manual first.