Table of Contents
Overview
There are a few vendors that Beeswax will submit your creatives to for approval. Technical documentation on the full creative approval process can be found here: http://docs.beeswax.com/docs/creative-approvals. Additionally, creative policies can be found here: http://beeswax.com/policies/.
How it works
Below is a list of creative approval vendors, and some information around why we submit creatives to each:
Vendor | Purpose |
Confiant | We partner with Confiant to scan each creative in the Beeswax platform to ensure we aren’t serving ads that contain malware. Creatives rejected by Confiant will be blocked from serving entirely. |
Google Authorized Buyers ("AdX") | Google Authorized Buyers (i.e. "AdX") requires all demand partners to submit creatives to them for approval before allowing a given creative to serve via their exchange. |
Xandr (Appnexus) | Xandr requires all demand partners to submit creatives to them for approval before allowing a given creative to serve via their exchange. Creatives typically take 24 hours to be reviewed. |
Creative Approval Statuses
Here are each of the statuses you may see as your creatives work their way through the approval process:
- Not Submitted: we submit creatives to each vendor periodically in batches. A status of ‘not submitted’ means that this creative is currently in the queue to be submitted.
- Pending: a status of ‘pending’ means that your creative has been successfully submitted to the creative approval vendor, and we are awaiting a response. It may take up to 24 hours to get a response in the case of Xandr.
- Rejected: a status of ‘rejected’ means this vendor has not approved your creative - see below for details around what you can do when this occurs.
- Error With Approval Process: a status of ‘Error With Approval Process’ means that an error occurred somewhere throughout the process - for details, contact Beeswax Support, providing the creative ID in question.
Note that we will automatically re-submit when common errors occur (such as timeouts / connection failures between us and the creative approval vendor). Creatives in an Inactive state will not be submitted for audit.
- Other: if you see a status not listed above, feel free to contact Beeswax Support—providing the creative ID in question—for details.
What to Do If Your Creative Is Rejected
Below are some steps you can take if your creative is rejected from any of these vendors. For details on why your creative was rejected, click the ‘View History’ button within the ‘Approval Status’ section of your creative:
Confiant
If your creative is rejected from Confiant / is marked as ‘suspicious’, feel free reach out to Beeswax Support.
Most of the time we will not be able to alter this status, as it indicates that a creative may contain malware or is otherwise harmful, but in certain cases we may be able to override this (e.g. it’s clearly a false positive, you own the inventory you intend to serve the creative on, you have explicit permission from the publisher, etc.).
Google Authorized Buyers (AdX)
If your creative is rejected by Google, click the ‘View History’ button for details on why your creative was not approved. You should see a rejection reason listed—for example, BROKEN_URL.
If you need clarification or further instructions on how to fix the issue, feel free to reach out to Beeswax Support (or if you have a billable seat on AdX, reach out to Google support directly).
Xandr (Appnexus)
Similar to AdX, if your creative is rejected by Xandr (Appnexus), click the ‘View History’ button for details on why your creative was not approved. You should see a rejection reason listed.
Important - Xandr refers to 3rd party creative IDs as “creative codes,” and they’ll be surfaced to the Xandr team in the following format: <Buzz Key>-<Creative ID>. For example, if your buzz key is “hive” (i.e. you access the UI via https://hive.beeswax.com/), and your creative ID is 7, you would provide them with the following creative code: hive-7.
Creative Approvals on Other Exchanges
In addition to Xandr / Appnexus and Google AdX, most other exchanges also have some sort of creative approval process. However, Xandr and AdX are the only two supply partners who expose their approval process to external parties via an API, and therefore, are the only two supply partners we’re able to expose to customers.
If one or more of your creatives are bidding but not winning any impressions on a particular exchange, feel free to reach out to Beeswax Support, and we can connect you with our SSP contact(s) who can investigate and confirm if your creative has been blocked.
FAQ
How long do creative audits take?
- Creative audits can take anywhere from a few hours to more than a day to complete (it depends on the vendor, and how many other creatives are already pending). If a creative has been pending for multiple days, feel free to reach out to Beeswax Support to ensure there is not an issue.
If my creative is still pending via Confiant, is it allowed to serve?
- Yes, the only time a creative will be blocked from serving entirely is if Confiant marks it as suspicious. Your creative will be allowed to serve while it is still under review.
If a creative is rejected by Google AdX or Xandr / Appnexus, will it affect this creative’s ability to serve on other exchanges?
- No, Google AdX and Xandr / Appnexus creative approvals only apply to their inventory. If your creative is rejected by AdX, you will still be able to serve on other exchanges (provided they have not separately blocked this creative).
My native creative is not submitted to Xandr, what should I do?
- We do not currently support native creatives on Xandr.
Do creative approvals ever change after the first approval?
- Yes, the creative approvals may change over time. Our system reconciles any changes with AdX and Xandr overnight. Confiant lets us know in real-time if they find anything suspicious about a creative.
Can I get alerted about Creative approvals?
- Yes, go to Admin > Alert Settings to set an alert on creative approvals. Click here for more information on alerts.
What causes a Creative to be resubmitted and what happens on resubmit?
- Any change to a Creative's content (image, click-through, tag, vendors, etc) will cause the creative to be re-submitted to all approval vendors. Changes to non-content fields such as the name or notes will not cause a resubmission. Until a resubmitted creative is approved by AdX and Xandr it will not serve on those exchanges, respectively.
- Secondly, creatives will only be submitted for audit if they are in an Active state. Keeping a creative as Inactive will prevent them from being audited until they are marked as Active.