A pre-flight check is the last review between a campaign draft and submission. Its purpose is to find preventable mistakes while they are still easy to fix: the wrong page, an unsupported claim, a badly cropped picture or a campaign budget entered in the wrong currency.
The checklist below follows the order we would review a small-business campaign. AthillyAds automates several of these checks, but business accuracy and OpenAI’s final review still need their own attention.
1. Confirm the account can progress to launch
Check that the intended advertiser account is selected and that its setup, verification and billing requirements have been addressed. Record anything still pending separately from the campaign draft.
An approved identity check is not necessarily the end of account review. OpenAI describes those as distinct steps in its advertiser account setup guidance. Preparing creative can continue while access is pending, but a completed draft is not proof that ads can serve.
In AthillyAds, a direct launch also requires an eligible advertising API connection. If you plan to use an export, verify who will upload it and which account they will select.
2. Read the offer, card and page together
Open the destination beside the proposed ad. Highlight every concrete promise: the price, location, product specification, delivery condition, guarantee and availability.
Imagine a fictional cleaning business whose ad says “Evening office cleaning” while the landing page offers only domestic cleaning. Both sentences might describe real services somewhere in the business, but this particular click does not reach the promised offer.
Check that:
- The page clearly describes the advertised service or product.
- Specific claims have support the reviewer and customer can find.
- Important qualifications appear before the customer commits.
- The main action is available on mobile.
- Images and wording belong to the business or are licensed for use.
AthillyAds checks ad copy against the Brand book. Correct the Brand book when the underlying business facts are wrong; otherwise the same error can return in another campaign draft.
3. Check creative against the export you will use
For its workbook-compatible ad cards, AthillyAds uses a title limit of 24 characters, a body limit of 48 characters and square PNG or JPEG images between 640 and 1200 pixels per side.
These describe the app’s preparation rules. They should not be confused with every maximum accepted elsewhere in Ads Manager or the API. OpenAI’s current bulk-upload checklist distinguishes recommended copy lengths from larger maximums and tells advertisers to follow the image requirements in the template or upload flow.
View the cropped image at thumbnail size. Can you still recognize the product or activity? An otherwise beautiful room photograph may become an unhelpful patch of wall when cropped square.
Read the title and body together. The body should add something useful, such as the service type or an important product fact. If both lines say “quality solutions,” the card has used its space without explaining the offer.
4. Test the exact landing page and image addresses
Copy the final destination from the campaign, including tracking parameters, into a private browser window. Check the final page after redirects, its selected variant and whether a visitor must sign in before seeing useful content.
Next, have whoever manages the website check automated access. Loading in your browser does not prove a crawler can reach the page. OpenAI requires access for OAI-AdsBot; its crawler guidance covers robots.txt, firewalls, CDN rules and human-verification challenges.
Review the particular failing path rather than disabling protection across the website. A product image on a separate CDN can have different access rules from the shop itself. Record the observed response and recheck after a fix.
Our landing-page guide expands on message matching and the customer journey.
5. Read the campaign settings aloud
Say the intended settings as one sentence: “This campaign promotes this offer, in these places, from this date, with this spending limit.” Compare that sentence with the form.
If you are unsure where a setting belongs, use the account, campaign and ad-group reference to check the hierarchy before reviewing the individual ads.
Pay particular attention to:
- Currency and whether the budget is daily or lifetime.
- Start and end dates, including the account’s time zone.
- Countries, regions and any narrower included areas.
- Whether a broad included location makes a narrower choice redundant.
- The objective and bid you intend to test.
A local service business should review geography with the person who schedules the work. A postcode can look plausible on a map while sitting outside a practical call-out area. This is a business check that software cannot infer reliably from the company name.
6. Check the export and the measurement path
AthillyAds offers different files for different jobs: a workbook creates new campaigns, while update CSV files target existing platform objects. Choose the file that matches the intended operation and review the selection before downloading.
Keep a record of what was approved and submitted. If a colleague has edited the live account since an earlier export, refresh your understanding before uploading another copy.
Finally, follow the ad’s complete journey: tagged URL, landing page, primary action and the business record that confirms an enquiry or order. Make a test submission where appropriate, identify it as a test and verify that the person responsible can find it.
7. Review what happens after submission
After submission, confirm the actual serving status and inspect any stated reason for non-delivery. A passed pre-flight check means the checked draft cleared those checks; it does not guarantee approval, impressions or a particular result.
OpenAI may require further account action or reject an ad after its own review. Keep a clear owner for those follow-ups and allow time to resolve them before a time-sensitive promotion.
You can build and check a first campaign in AthillyAds or start with context-hint ideas from a landing page. Once it serves, use the first-week review guide to separate delivery problems from performance questions.