A practical checklist for AdOps managers to ensure campaign data quality before every launch.

Why pre-launch auditing matters

By the time a campaign goes live, most of the damage from data quality problems has already been done. You can't retroactively fix a month of broken attribution. You can't reconstruct clean frequency data from a pixel that misfired. Pre-launch auditing is the only point in the workflow where you can catch these problems at zero cost.

What follows is the checklist I've used across agency and in-house AdOps teams. It's not exhaustive — every team has unique systems — but these ten items catch the majority of launch-day data problems.

The checklist

1. Campaign naming convention compliance

Every campaign, ad group, line item, and creative must follow your team's naming convention. Check for:

Correct segment order
Underscores (not spaces or hyphens) as separators
Date format: YYYYMMDD, not April2026 or 04/01/26
TitleCase on text segments, no all-caps shouting

A single inconsistency here multiplies into broken joins throughout your reporting stack.

2. Floodlight / pixel placement and firing

Open DevTools, go to the page where the conversion fires, and watch the network requests. Verify:

The correct Floodlight or pixel fires on the correct page
It fires exactly once (check for double-fire on page reload)
The src or event parameters match what's configured in Campaign Manager or your tag management system

3. Click tracker and impression tracker parity

Every creative that has a click tracker should also have an impression tracker, and vice versa. Mismatches create gaps in your frequency data and make viewability reporting unreliable.

4. Creative asset dimensions

Pull the accepted size list for every placement you're trafficking. Verify each creative matches exactly:

Pixel dimensions (300x250 is not 299x251)
File weight limits
Animation length limits (especially for DOOH, where this varies by screen)
Format requirements (HTML5, MP4, JPEG — whatever the publisher spec says)

Rejected creatives are a launch-day fire drill. Check beforehand.

5. Date and flight settings

Verify start and end dates in your ad server match the signed IO. Then check:

Timezone: your ad server's timezone vs. the client's expected timezone
Start time: midnight launch vs. business-hours launch
End date: inclusive or exclusive? Some platforms stop serving at the start of the end date, some at the end

6. Budget and pacing settings

Cross-reference the IO against what's entered in the ad server. Check:

Total budget matches the IO
Daily budget (if applicable) is consistent with the total
Pacing is set correctly: even vs. ASAP vs. front-loaded
Currency is correct (yes, this happens — especially on multinational campaigns)

7. Targeting parameters

Review every targeting layer against the media plan:

Geography: DMA, country, postal code — whatever was planned
Audience segments: are the correct first-party or third-party segments attached?
Device: desktop, mobile, CTV — check for unintentional exclusions
Brand safety and exclusion lists applied

8. UTM parameter completeness

Every click URL should have a complete, consistent UTM string:

?utm_source=gam&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=Nike_SpringSale_20260401&utm_content=300x250

Verify:

utm_campaign matches the official campaign name exactly (this is where naming and attribution directly intersect)
No spaces — use + or %20 if unavoidable, but you should have no spaces in your campaign names anyway
All five standard parameters are present: source, medium, campaign, term (if applicable), content

9. Third-party tag compliance

If you're serving third-party tags from a DSP or ad network, check:

Tags are SSL-compliant (all https://)
Tags have passed your ad quality or malware scanner
Tags are wrapped correctly in your ad server (DoubleClick wrapping, SafeFrame, etc.)

10. Reporting pull test

Before launch, run a test pull of your reporting template against any live campaigns from the past 30 days. Confirm:

Campaign names appear as expected (not garbled or truncated)
Dimensions join correctly to your attribution data
Metrics are populating and are reasonable (not zeroes, not wildly inflated)

Making this systematic

A checklist only works if it's used. Build it into your workflow as a required sign-off step before any campaign activates. Assign ownership — one person per launch who is accountable for confirming each item.

Teams that do this consistently spend far less time firefighting mid-campaign and far more time actually analysing performance.

Automate item #1 on this checklist. AdOps Auditor validates your campaign names against your naming convention in seconds, with a compliance score and plain-English fix suggestions for every violation. One less thing to check manually before every launch.

AdOps Data Quality Checklist: 10 Things to Audit Before Every Campaign Launch