How Does Creative Testing and Approval Work In XPO?

In XPO, once you have created a creative and published it, it will be submitted to XPO a series of testing and checking by XPO automated testing system and our team. Here is a brief overview of how a creative in XPO is being checked and verified:

1. Newly created and published creative will be sent to Knorex XPO automated creative testing for checks. See (A).
2. If any error is discovered, it will be flagged down and indicated in XPO UI. Any further error or complications, the creative will be sent to Knorex QA team for manual checks.
3. Otherwise, if all are well, then the creative will be sent to our appointed third-party vendors for their checks.
4. Finally, once it passes, it will be propagated to the ad exchanges and SSPs that XPO is connected with for further checks and verification and subject to their respective applicable checks. See (B).

(A) XPO Automated Creative Testing

The statuses listed here describe the different status and its meaning.

Creative Status	Description
In Review	Creative is submitted to Knorex automation test: the submitted ad creative will be reviewed through automated test executions before being approved/rejected by Knorex Quality Assurance (QA) team.
Rejected/Disapproved	When the creative is rejected through automation tests, the status is set to Rejected. Knorex Team will manually check these creatives for the errors.
Ads Error (specific to Facebook ads)	These creatives have an error or warning triggered by Facebook.
Ready/Published	If the creative is successfully approved by the automation test, the status will change to Ready or Published. Ready: means creative has been approved by Knorex automation test or approved manually by Knorex QA team. Start date is set in the future date and is not scheduled to go live just yet.  Published: means the creative has been approved by Knorex automation test or approved manually by Knorex QA team. The ad is active and ready to go live immediately. Start date has already begun.
Draft	Ad creative is created as a draft without any ad design or asset files assembled.
Expired	The ad creative is no longer available for use as it has past the end date.
N/A	Programmatic Creative: Ad creative has been archived.
	Facebook Creative: Ad creative is unlinked from the ad group.
	Search Creative: Ad creative is unlinked from the ad group.

• Facebook, Search, and LinkedIn ads are not Approved or Rejected by automation tests. Their approval or rejection depends on Facebook, Adword, or LinkedIn's respective Creative type.
• Native ads are also not approved or rejected by automation tests. They get Published in XPO once it's designed. 
• Statuses related to an Exchange will be based on their individual requirements.

(B) Approval by Ad Exchanges/SSPs (Applicable if involves Programmatic Channel)

Pending	Once your creatives are approved by Knorex's internal quality assurance team and sent to the Exchanges for review, your creative status will go into Pending.
Resubmit	If your creative remains in Pending status for a long time or gets rejected by the Exchange, you can click on the resubmit button to check the approval status from the Exchange or request to resubmit the creative to them.

(C) Things Tested in a Creative During XPO Checks

• Text, images, video tags are present and displayed correctly in the creative.

• The banner click-through link is displayed in the creative and displays the landing page.

• The impression tracker is fired when the creative is loaded and displayed successfully.
• The engagement tracker is fired when visitor hovers the mouse over the creative.

• When prospects click on the creative, the click tracker will be fired.

• Slider contents are clickable, and showing its contents properly, and the click-through URLs are working.

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• Videos must be loaded and played correctly.

• Video ad will be played first, followed by the background video, and must be muted by default with the mute icon displayed.

• Interactions on video, i.e. play/pause/resume video ad/background video, are working.
• Tabs and its respective contents should be displayed correctly.
• UTM Tags must be configured correctly, including required tags such as utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign' with their values are in the banner link. Other tags such as ‘utm_term’ and ‘utm_content’ are optional. Clicking the link with UTM Tags will land properly on the landing page, without error.
• Booking forms fields must be visible: textbox, check box, date picker, etc. correctly..
• The creative is crawlable i.e. all the links in the creative should return to the right pages when prospects click on them.
• The creative's javascript is error-free.

• The total size of the creative should be less than 5MB.