theTradeDesk Standard Rules

In this article, you'll find all Standard Rules included as part of the adnomaly monitoring framework for theTradeDesk campaigns.

These rules are available to all clients and are designed to help identify unusual activity, potential issues, and budget risks. If there are specific rules you would like to deactivate or reactivate, you can manage them through the Operations Center.

If you'd like to review the available advanced rules for your DSP, please refer to the theTradeDesk Advanced Rule Catalog.

theTradeDesk Standard Rule Catalog

The table below outlines each rule's scope, alert conditions, and real-life scenarios. For information on the Standard Rules, refer to the Rule Catalog table below.

RULE NAME	RULE DESCRIPTION	PRACTICAL EXAMPLE
Budget Rule	Ensures the campaign budget is within the usual range for the ad account to prevent unintended overspending caused by unusual budget settings.	A campaign is configured accidentally with a daily budget of €10,000 instead of €100. The campaign spends significantly more than intended before the mistake is noticed.
Pacing Type Rule	Monitors the campaign’s pacing settings to ensure they align with the account's standard delivery logic.	A campaign intended to use Standard Pacing is accidentally configured to use Accelerated Pacing, causing the available budget to be spent much earlier than planned.
Geo-Targeting Rule	Ensures that campaigns target only the approved countries, postal codes, or regions configured for the ad account.	While duplicating a campaign, Italy is accidentally selected instead of Germany as a geo-targeting, causing ads to reach the wrong audience and reducing campaign performance.
Language Rule	Ensures that the campaign targets only the approved or usual languages for the ad account.	A campaign intended for German-speaking customers is accidentally configured to target Spanish, resulting in ads being shown to users who are unlikely to engage.
Brand Safety Rule	Ensures that standard platform brand safety thresholds and verified pre-bid partners are active to prevent ads from serving next to unsafe content.	A campaign is accidentally published with a new set of line items without activating the account's standard pre-bid verification settings, and then this rule blocks the launch to prevent ads from appearing on unsuitable inventory.
Unusual URL Rule	Ensures that the destination URL points to an approved website domain rather than a generic, unapproved, or staging link.	A campaign is accidentally configured with an incorrect or unrelated URL for the creative, leading clicking users to the wrong landing page.
Broken URL Rule (404)	Regularly checks whether the landing page links are active and accessible to prevent traffic from being directed to broken URLs.	A landing page is misconfigured or removed entirely, causing users who click on the live ad to arrive at a '404 Page Not Found' error.
Keyword & Category Targeting Rule	Monitors active contextual parameters to ensure mandatory keyword lists and brand safety categories are properly included or excluded.	A campaign is accidentally configured to omitting the global negative contextual category list to a newly built ad group, and then this rule catches the missing safety segment and flags the omission.
Whitelist / Blacklist Rule	Validates that the active channel, application, or domain lists correspond to authorized placement parameters.	A campaign accidentally uses an outdated/unusual domain exclusion list during a duplicative setup, and then this rule cross-references the list version against the account's master whitelist/blacklist records.
Invalid Traffic (IVT) Rule	Monitors whether required pre-bid IVT protection filters and verification partners are actively applied to filter fraudulent impressions.	A campaign misses out the required pre-bid fraud filters while constructing custom ad groups, and then this rule reviews the IVT configurations and flags the setup to prevent budget wastage on non-human traffic.

theTradeDesk Standard Rule Catalog

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