Troubleshooting Unwanted Ad Redirects on Your Website

Troubleshooting Unwanted Ad Redirects on Your Website

Summary

Unwanted ad redirects create a poor user experience and can harm your site's reputation. This guide will help you diagnose the most common causes of redirects, including specific ad formats and third-party campaigns. Follow these steps to identify the source of the issue and learn how to effectively report it to our support team for a quick resolution.

Introduction

Experiencing an unexpected redirect on your site can be frustrating. While our network has robust security measures in place, malicious ad creatives can occasionally bypass them. This guide provides a clear, step-by-step process to help you identify the cause and gather the necessary information for our team to block the source.


Step 1: Check Your Ad Format Configuration

Before contacting support, it's important to verify that the behavior is not caused by a specific ad format you have enabled.

Check for Pop-Under Ads

The Pop-Under ad unit is designed to work via redirection. When a user clicks on your site, this format opens the advertiser's campaign in a new tab or window, taking the visitor away from your site.

  • Action: Please verify in your dashboard whether you have the Pop-Under format integrated on your site. If so, this is the expected behavior of that ad unit.

Check for Google Vignette Ads

Certain Google ad campaigns, such as "Google Vignette" ads, are full-screen formats that appear between page loads. While they are not technically redirects, they can cover the entire page and may be mistaken for one.

  • Action: Check if you have enabled this type of campaign on your site.

If you have confirmed that neither of these formats is active, please proceed to the next step.


Step 2: How to Report an Unwanted Redirect

To resolve the problem as quickly as possible, our technical team needs specific information. Please gather the following details before contacting support:

  1. Capture a Screenshot or Screen Recording: This is the most important evidence. Please record a video of the redirect in action so our team can see the ad's behavior on your site.

  2. Identify the Ad Creative: Does the same advertisement or landing page appear every time the redirect happens, or does it change?

  3. Specify the Device: Does the redirect occur on desktopmobile, or both?

  4. Provide Your Ad Configuration: Do you have a different ad layout on mobile versus desktop? Please list which ad units are integrated on each version of your site.

  5. Note the Start Date: When did you first notice these redirect campaigns?

  6. Send Your Report: Once you have collected all of the above, please email the information to our support team at contact@themoneytizer.com. Our agents will analyze the data and may ask for further clarification if needed.


Why Do Redirects Sometimes Occur? (Our Quality Process)

We are committed to providing the best possible ad experience for both our publishers and their visitors.

Our ad network is protected by Confiant, an industry-leading tool that scans all ad creatives submitted by our SSP partners to ensure they meet our quality standards. By default, we block inappropriate categories such as alcohol, tobacco, and adult content across all our partners. We also require our SSP partners to respect the exact ad unit sizes to ensure a non-intrusive experience.

Despite these protections, malicious ads can occasionally bypass security measures. This sometimes happens during periods of low ad demand (like January or the summer months) when some DSPs may push redirect campaigns with unusually high CPMs to win the auction. They bypass our filters by mis-declaring the ad creative's true size or behavior.

When you report these instances with the information requested above, you help us identify and block these sources to protect you and our entire network.

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