Checking Your Ads Appear Where You Paid for Them
Put simply: ad verification means checking, for yourself, that your online ads are being shown properly: the right advert, in the right spot, to the right people, in the right place, and leading to the right page. Ad networks decide what to show based on each visitor's IP address and location, so you can only check fairly from addresses that look like real people in each place you're targeting.
Say you run a small shop and pay for ads aimed at shoppers in Dublin, but you live somewhere else. From your own connection you'll never see what a Dublin shopper sees. A residential or mobile proxy in Dublin fixes that. This guide explains which type to use, what to check, and how to keep it to a simple routine. Is this allowed? Yes, when you're checking your own ads, or ads shown publicly to everyone, within each platform's terms of service.
Written and kept up to date by the people who run Budget Proxies. If a step no longer matches what you see on your screen, let us know through the contact page.
What this guide walks you through
- Why your own connection can't show you the full picture
- Residential for desktop ads, mobile for phone ads
- Five things worth checking
- Which type for which check
- A simple routine to follow
Why your own connection can't show you the full picture
Ad networks often draw fences around their adverts by location and by type of network. They may show different ads, or none at all, to visits that look like they come from data centres. So a datacenter proxy would show you something no real customer ever sees, which defeats the point of checking. Your home connection has the opposite problem: it only shows what people near you see. To see what a real customer sees, you need an address on a real home or mobile network in the place you're targeting.
Residential for desktop ads, mobile for phone ads
Residential, for ads seen on computers
Residential proxies do most of the work. They show you desktop ad placements the way a household in a particular city or country would see them, with city-level targeting in the major markets. They start at $3.98/GB.
Mobile (4G/5G), for ads seen on phones
Plenty of campaigns only run on phones. To check those, mobile proxies let you see ads as someone on a real phone network does, right down to the carrier's network ID. If you advertise on both computers and phones, use residential and mobile together.
Five things worth checking
- The right places: your campaign shows up in the regions you chose, and only there.
- The right advert: the correct version appears, with no broken images or wrong variants.
- The right landing page: clicking the ad takes people where it should, with no odd redirects along the way.
- Signs of ad fraud: suspicious placements, hidden ads, or ad space that isn't what it claimed to be.
- What others are running: the public ads competitors show in each market.
Which type for which check
Keep this table handy when you plan your checks.
| What you're checking | Type to use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Ads shown on computers | Residential | Looks like a real household in that market |
| Phone-only campaigns | Mobile (4G/5G) | Shows what a real phone user sees |
| Ads aimed at one city | Residential | Lets you pick the city in big markets |
| Daily checks on many ads | Residential (rotating) | Spreads your checks over many IPs |
| Hard-to-reach ad networks | Residential Premium | Gets through more often |
A simple routine to follow
For each campaign, set the country, and in major markets the city, then run your checks through residential IPs (and mobile ones for phone-only ads). Check high-spend campaigns daily and smaller ones at least once a week. Our IPs cover 55+ countries, arrive instantly and work over HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5.
Next steps: read the proxies for ad verification page, estimate your cost on the proxy calculator, compare the types on the pricing page, or buy now. Keep every check within each platform's terms of service.
Questions beginners ask
Not sure what to buy? Start at step 1
Here are our four types, from the lowest price per GB upwards. Try a small amount of the first one that could work for your project, and only move up a step if a quick test lets you down.
Sites without bot protection, big batches of public pages, automation and SEO tools
Protected sites, ad checks, market research and seeing what one place really sees
Apps and platforms built for phones, plus testing your own mobile app
Well-guarded sites, where a better success rate is worth the higher price
Small first order? Datacenter from $2.49/GB · billed on the data you actually move · ready straight away · 30 days to use it · no traffic logs.
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Read the guide →Got a particular job in mind?
Ready to try your first proxy?
Choose from 55+ countries, pay from $2.49/GB for only the data you use, and get your login details straight away. If a step trips you up, human support is there 24/7.
