Microsoft Monetize - Creative audit best practices
The creative audit process ensures that all creatives served on the Microsoft Advertising platform meet the requirements of publishers wishing to expand their trusted network of partners.
This process takes time and manpower because the human auditing process is very meticulous. To reduce the audit turnaround time, you should consider the following best practices:
Submit your creatives early.
We recommend submitting creatives at least a week ahead of your flight dates. While it takes only one business day for a creative to be audited, submitting it early will allow you to address any issues that might be identified during the audit process. This will also give you time to make sure your creatives are compliant with all policies that might hinder them from serving on desired sites or reduce spend. Submitting creatives early is especially important during holidays or before known periods of increased advertising volume.
Pace your creative submissions.
When submitting a large number of creatives for audit, you should submit them over an extended period of time. Pacing submissions over the course of the day maintains the health of our audit queue and allows us to deliver on our SLA for all members. Bulk submissions can cause audit delays for all members on the platform, including you. If a bulk submission is too large, Microsoft Advertising will de-prioritize it to reduce delays across the ecosystem. This causes delays in audit times of the de-prioritized creatives.
Avoid automated submissions.
Microsoft Advertising highly discourages using scripts that automatically submit creatives for audit. We have found that this practice leads to complications for both Microsoft Advertising and its clients.
Bulk submissions can occur as a result of glitches in these scripts. These bulk submissions often will not be identified as a mistake until many of the creatives have already been audited, which may lead to high or unprojected audit fees. This may also hinder the audit queue, causing delays to all submissions. Even when intentional, it is common for automatically submitted creatives to have technical issues that may result in a Microsoft Advertising audit failure, such as incorrect click-through issues and rotating stock creatives. By avoiding automatic queue submissions, you ensure that all creatives are ready to be audited at the time of submission, decreasing the number of rejected creatives submitted for audit.
Stay in contact with your Microsoft Advertising representative or the Audit Client Services team.
We understand that bulk submissions are sometimes necessary. When you need to submit a large number of creatives for audit, you should always keep Microsoft Advertising informed.
Note
With forewarning, we will be able to devote additional resources to ensuring your creatives are audited as quickly as possible, and keep you up to date if we see problems with your bulk creative uploads. You will not run the risk of having your creatives de-prioritized or completely removed from our queue.
To keep us informed about your creative submissions, contact either your Microsoft Advertising representative or the Audit Client Services team directly through the support form at Customer Support.