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Use cases

Ad verification proxies: see the ad a local user sees

Ad verification proxies route each check through a residential IP in the market you are auditing, so you see the creative, placement, redirect chain and landing page a local user gets, not the version a cloaked campaign shows to office and datacenter IPs. TrueProxies sells residential IPv4 with city and ASN targeting on GB-based plans, 1 GB for $1.64, with evidence templates for every check.

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Last updated: · Reviewed by John Hale

Key facts
Proxy typeResidential IPv4, rotating or sticky sessions
Pool50M+ IPs (GB-based) · 16M+ IPs (Unlimited)
Countries150+
TargetingCountry, region, city, ASN (GB-based) · Country, city (Unlimited)
ProtocolsHTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5
Price from1 GB for $1.64 · $4.08/hour unlimited
EvidenceJSON and CSV templates, field dictionary, preflight checker
TrialFree hour of Residential IPv4 Unlimited, country and city targeting
Not offeredMobile carrier IPs, static ISP, ZIP targeting

Why

Why ad checks need a local residential IP

Local viewpoint. Campaigns are targeted by country, region, city and ISP, and the ad server decides what to show from the visitor's IP before the page finishes loading. An office connection sees one market, usually not the one you are auditing. A residential exit in the target city returns the creative, placement and landing page that a household there receives.

Cloaking. Some advertisers serve a compliant page to the IP ranges of ad networks, verification vendors, offices and datacenters, and a different payload to consumer IPs. Google's research paper Cloak of Visibility measured the technique across search and ad traffic, and GeoEdge's guide to using proxy services to QA ad campaigns shows how it looks in practice. A check from a residential IP is the practical way to see the consumer-facing version.

Fraud, brand safety and compliance. Placement and adjacency checks, regulated-ad rules that differ by jurisdiction (gambling, alcohol, finance, pharmaceuticals) and affiliate redirects that route by country all need a vantage point inside the market. A screenshot taken from the wrong country proves nothing in a dispute.

Invalid-traffic filtering. Industry invalid-traffic guidelines treat known data-center traffic as non-human, so ad stacks often filter it or serve it something else. A datacenter IP can therefore return fewer ads, different ads or a clean page. A residential IPv4 exit is not classified as hosting traffic at the network layer. Publishers can still evaluate browser and behavior signals, so record the exit and the response rather than assuming anything about either.

Types

Residential vs mobile vs datacenter vs ISP proxies for ad verification

Ad stacks classify the network an IP belongs to before they decide what to serve, so the proxy type sets what a check can see. Residential IPv4 covers most web display, search and landing-page work. Mobile carrier IPs matter for in-app and carrier-targeted campaigns. Static ISP addresses suit long logged-in sessions. Datacenter IPs are the cheapest and the most likely to be filtered or cloaked.

TrueProxies sells residential IPv4 (GB-based with city, region and ASN targeting, and Unlimited with country and city targeting) and Datacenter IPv6. It does not sell mobile carrier IPs, static ISP addresses or ZIP targeting. If your campaigns target carriers or run inside apps, pair TrueProxies with a mobile specialist. Residential vs mobile proxies for ad verification works through the decision channel by channel.

Proxy types compared for ad verification
Proxy typeSeen by ad stacks asGeo precisionBest forWeak atTrueProxies
Residential (rotating or sticky)Consumer ISP userCountry to region, city and ASNDisplay, search and landing-page checks; cloaking re-checksHeavily reused IPs can be flaggedYes: GB-based (city, region, ASN) and Unlimited (country, city)
Mobile (carrier)Carrier userCountry and carrierIn-app and carrier-targeted campaignsCost per checkNot offered; pair with a mobile specialist
Static ISPFixed consumer-ISP IPFew countriesLong logged-in dashboardsLimited geographyNot offered
DatacenterHosting networkCountry or city of the hostRedirect status checks where cloaking is not a riskFiltered as invalid traffic; shown the clean pageDatacenter IPv6 only; not recommended for ad checks

Checks

Ad verification checks you can run

Each check below is one HTTP or browser session through a residential exit, with the same evidence fields recorded every time. Run it once for a spot check or on a schedule for monitoring. The "Capture" line names the fields from the evidence kit that make the result comparable across markets and repeatable in a dispute.

Geo-targeting and placement checks

Load the publisher page, search result or app landing page from a residential IP in the targeted country or city and confirm the campaign is served there, in the right slot, with the right creative. Repeat from a city the campaign excludes to confirm it is not served. Country- and city-level checks run on either residential product; region and ASN checks need a GB-based plan.

Capture: exit IP reference, exit country, requested and final URL, creative ID, placement ID, screenshot, timestamp.

Cloaking and malvertising detection

Open the same ad and landing page from a datacenter exit and from a residential exit in the same city, then compare. A cloaked campaign returns a compliant page to the datacenter route and a different destination, a forced redirect or an auto-download to the consumer route. Treat one difference as a lead to repeat, not as proof; two consistent repeats from different residential exits are evidence.

Capture: network origin, redirect chain, final URL, HTTP status, screenshot, challenge result, repeat count.

Affiliate links and redirect chains

Follow every hop of an affiliate or tracking link from each market you pay for. Geo-routed links often send visitors to a different storefront per country, drop tracking parameters on the way, or land on a page that does not match the offer. Record each hop's status code and host so a broken chain can be shown to the network. How to test affiliate links by country walks through the procedure.

Capture: redirect chain with status codes, whether tracking parameters survived, final URL, timestamp.

Competitor ad monitoring

Google's Ads Transparency Center and Meta's Ad Library list a brand's ads by region for free and are the place to start. They do not show where an ad runs on publisher sites, what the landing page serves locally, or what price a local visitor sees. A residential check from the market fills those gaps. Do not click competitor ads during a check; loading the page is enough.

Capture: publisher, placement, creative, landing page, local price, timestamp.

Regulated ads and brand safety by jurisdiction

Gambling, alcohol, finance and health ads are legal in some regions and not others, and a placement next to unsafe content is a brand-safety failure only in the market where it appears. Check from inside each jurisdiction and keep the screenshot with the exit country attached so a regulator or client can see what was served where.

Capture: exit country and region, placement, adjacent content, screenshot, timestamp.

Localized landing pages and prices

Campaigns often route to country-specific landing pages with local currency, stock and offers. Load the landing page through a residential exit in each market and compare currency, price, language and the offer shown against the campaign brief. The same check catches a redirect to a global fallback page when a country-specific one was expected.

Capture: final URL, locale, currency and price shown, screenshot, timestamp.

The problem

What ad verification proxies can and cannot prove

An ad verification proxy routes a check through another network location so you can inspect the creative, publisher placement, redirect path, and landing page returned there. It can reveal a mismatch worth investigating, but a proxy result does not prove fraud by itself.

Datacenter and residential exits may receive different content when a publisher or ad platform classifies network origin. Compare both when origin-specific behavior is part of the investigation.

Residential IPv4 provides consumer-ISP exits and location controls. Publishers can still evaluate other request and browser signals, so do not describe the verification request as indistinguishable from a person.

Capture the exit IP, timestamp, requested and final URLs, HTTP status, creative, placement, screenshot, and account state for each check. Report sample size, success rate, challenge rate, and test date when comparing markets. Repeat suspicious results before escalating them.

If you're comparing workflows before you commit, explore all proxy use cases to see which setup fits best.

Where proxies fit

Where proxies fit next to DoubleVerify, IAS, GeoEdge and HUMAN

Tag-based verification vendors such as DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, GeoEdge and HUMAN measure campaigns at scale from inside the ad call: viewability, invalid traffic, brand-safety scoring and blocking of bad creatives. Their measurement covers every impression the tag sees. It does not reproduce what one visitor in one city receives from one publisher at one moment.

Proxy checks are the independent, reproducible spot check that sits next to that measurement: pre-launch geo QA before a campaign spends, re-verifying a vendor alert from a residential vantage point, evidence for a dispute with a network or an affiliate, and redirect audits the tag never sees. GeoEdge's own guide to QA-ing campaigns with proxy services and the IAB's guidelines for the conduct of ad verification describe the same division of labor. Proxies do not replace measurement at scale; they answer the question a dashboard cannot.

Cost

Cost per 1,000 ad checks

GB-based plans bill transferred data, so the cost of a check is the data it loads. A redirect-chain check that follows the hops without loading images or scripts moves a fraction of a megabyte. A full browser render with a screenshot moves a few megabytes. A video-heavy publisher page can move ten or more. The sizes below are the medians measured on 30 September 2026 across 50 loads per check type (ten publisher homepages and five YouTube watch pages, fresh browser context per load, bytes read from the HAR; 41 of the 50 full renders completed within 60 seconds) from a direct connection, with the 90th percentile beside each; residential exits in each market are measured next and the table updated. The price columns use the published traffic pack rates: 1 GB for $1.64 on the smallest pack, down to $0.60/GB on the 5,000 GB traffic pack.

Cost per 1,000 checks on GB-based plans
Check typeData per check (measured)Per 1,000 checks at $1.64/GB (median)Per 1,000 checks at $0.60/GB (median)
Redirect chain only (document requests, no images or scripts)0.8 MB median · 5.6 MB p90$1.31$0.48
Full render with screenshot3.8 MB median · 6.4 MB p90$6.23$2.28
Video-heavy page (YouTube watch page, 8 s of playback)7.6 MB median · 9.7 MB p90$12.46$4.56

Residential IPv4 Unlimited at 10 Mbps for one day ($7.35) can move up to 108 GB at full utilization: a theoretical maximum of about 28,000 full renders at 3.8 MB, with country-level targeting only. A redirect check that reads only the response headers of each hop moves a few kilobytes instead of the whole document. Real throughput depends on the targets and your concurrency, so measure one representative batch before choosing a plan.

Markets that ask for ad verification, with the published residential IPv4 snapshot
MarketResidential IPv4 poolCity coverageSnapshot verified
United States10.5M+50+ cities
United Kingdom3.5M+20+ cities
Germany3.5M+25+ cities
Spain4.0M+20+ cities
France2.9M+20+ cities
Netherlands1.5M+12+ cities
Japan3.6M+20+ cities
Australia2.3M+15+ cities
Canada3.0M+20+ cities

Pool and city figures come from the residential IPv4 market snapshot of 12 July 2026, published with its evidence ID on each country guide. Region and ASN targeting are GB-based controls; Unlimited plans target these markets by country and city. Cost per check is the same in every market; only the pack size changes the rate.

Ad verification cost per check: the bandwidth and proxy mathResidential IPv4 GB-based plansProxy cost calculator

How TrueProxies solves it

Residential vantage points with evidence attached

Consumer-ISP exits in 150+ countries

Residential IPv4 exits sit on household ISP networks, the origin ad stacks serve consumer campaigns to. Publishers can still read browser and behavior signals, so record the exit with every response.

City, region and ASN targeting

GB-based plans target by country, city, region, or ASN, written on the proxy username. Unlimited supports country and city targeting. Verify the exit before judging a location-targeted campaign.

Evidence templates and preflight

Blank JSON and CSV templates, a field dictionary and a proxy checker preflight turn one-off screenshots into comparable, repeatable observations you can hand to a network or a client.

Integration

Setting up ad verification with TrueProxies

  1. 1Define the campaign, expected markets, creative, publisher, placement, schedule, and escalation rule before collecting evidence.
  2. 2Choose GB-based billing for region or ASN checks and periodic audits; compare an Unlimited speed-and-duration plan for recurring country- or city-level monitoring.
  3. 3Generate proxy credentials in the dashboard and write the targeting on the username: country and city on both products, region or ASN on GB-based (see the connection reference on docs.trueproxies.com).
  4. 4Verify and record the observed proxy exit before loading the ad or publisher page, with the proxy checker or a request to an IP echo service.
  5. 5Load the target with a clean browser profile, then capture the timestamp, requested and final URLs, HTTP status, redirect chain, creative, placement, account state, and screenshot.
  6. 6Map the capture to the evidence kit's field dictionary so results from different markets and dates stay comparable.
  7. 7Repeat suspicious results from a second exit and a control location, then compare the evidence with the ad platform report before escalating.
Playwright
import { chromium } from "playwright";

// Node 18+, npm i playwright. Run: node check.mjs https://example.com/landing
// Gateway and credentials come from your dashboard. Targeting is written on the
// username: USER-country-de or USER-country-de-city-berlin on both products.
const url = process.argv[2];
const proxy = {
  server: process.env.PROXY_SERVER, // e.g. http://YOUR_HOST:8080
  username: process.env.PROXY_USER, // e.g. USER-country-de-city-berlin-session-ad01
  password: process.env.PROXY_PASS,
};

const browser = await chromium.launch({ proxy });
try {
  const context = await browser.newContext({ recordHar: { path: "check.har" } });
  const page = await context.newPage();

  // Preflight: record the exit the ad server will see before loading the target.
  const exit = await (await page.goto("https://httpbin.org/ip")).json();

  const navigations = [];
  page.on("framenavigated", (frame) => {
    if (frame === page.mainFrame()) navigations.push(frame.url());
  });

  const response = await page.goto(url, { waitUntil: "networkidle" });
  const httpRedirects = [];
  for (let request = response?.request(); request; request = request.redirectedFrom()) {
    httpRedirects.unshift(request.url());
  }

  await page.screenshot({ path: "check.png", fullPage: true });
  console.log(JSON.stringify({
    checkedAt: new Date().toISOString(),
    exit,
    url,
    status: response?.status(),
    httpRedirects,
    navigations,
    finalUrl: page.url(),
  }, null, 2));

  await context.close(); // writes check.har
} finally {
  await browser.close();
}

Implementation options

Custom scriptsPuppeteerPlaywright

Optional evidence resources

Ad-verification evidence kit

Declare the batch before collection, retain successful and failed observations, and calculate summaries from the same ordered snake_case fields. The blank downloads contain no observations, credentials, raw exit IPs, account identifiers, screenshots, or share capabilities.

Method ad-verification-v1

Reviewed

Blank templates · no observations

Controlled collection method

  1. 1Predeclare a non-sensitive batch ID and campaign reference, expected market, schedule, sample size, success rule, optional paired challenge indicator, settling window, selector observation window, and known limitations.
  2. 2Preflight server-side proxy connectivity and cold response time, then separately verify a globally routable IPv4 browser exit and an assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 routed-country match. Store raw exit evidence outside the worksheet and use only a non-reversible access-controlled reference.
  3. 3Store approved URL origins and exact capability-free paths. Remove credentials, queries, and fragments; redact every other path while preserving its actual HTTP(S) origin.
  4. 4Give every observation a unique ID. Run target selectors and screenshot capture only after target navigation succeeds; keep screenshots in a restrictive private directory and emit only a nullable non-public reference.
  5. 5Evaluate all declared success-rule conditions. Record not_tested for target evidence skipped after navigation failure, calculate challenge rate only across challenge-tested observations, and publish challenge-test coverage beside it.

Interpretation limits

  • A proxy adds a network vantage point. It does not reproduce every consumer, account, device, browser fingerprint, cookie state, or auction condition.
  • A placement difference is evidence to repeat and investigate; it is not automatic proof of fraud, invalid traffic, concealment, or target acceptance.
  • Proxy Checker is a server-side connectivity diagnostic and reports cold response time, not bandwidth. IP Leak Test inspects browser-visible routing signals. Neither tool proves that an ad was delivered correctly.
  • The public artifacts are intentionally blank. Populate them only with authorized observations and keep sensitive source evidence in an access-controlled system.

Blank, versioned downloads

GitHub · MIT

Evidence kit on GitHub

The same templates, the field dictionary, the Playwright example and a README, under the MIT licence. Fork it, open issues, or pin a version.

Ad verification evidence kit on GitHub

JSON · v1

Blank JSON evidence template

Versioned batch plan, empty observations array, and blank summary fields.

Open blank artifact

CSV · v1

Blank CSV evidence template

Header-only plan, observation, and summary columns in the same documented order.

Open blank artifact

JSON · v1

Field dictionary

Field groups, definitions, sanitization, failure, success, and challenge-rate rules.

Open blank artifact

Preflight and route diagnostics

Proxy Checker

Preflight endpoint connectivity, transport, cold response time, and server-exit IP evidence before the browser workflow.

Check proxy connectivity

IP Leak Test

Compare browser-visible IPv4, IPv6, WebRTC, and DNS signals after the proxy is configured.

Inspect browser routing

Verified locations

Choose from country guides and confirm the exit IP before interpreting a localized response.

Review verified locations

Residential IPv4 Unlimited

Plan recurring media-heavy checks against fixed speed-and-duration billing using a representative batch first.

Plan a recurring workload

See ads from another country

The free official tools first, then the residential proxy method step by step, with a checklist for each market.

Read the guide

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What are ad verification proxies?

They route a check through an IP in the market you are auditing, so the ad server returns what a local user gets: the creative, placement, redirect chain and landing page. Residential IPs matter because ad stacks and cloaked campaigns treat datacenter traffic differently from consumer ISP traffic.

Can ad networks detect residential proxies?

Some can. Ad stacks and fraud tools score IPs by network type, reputation and behavior, and heavily reused residential IPs get flagged. Fresh exits, realistic sessions and a preflight check of the exit reduce that risk. No provider can promise zero detection, and TrueProxies does not.

Should I use residential or mobile proxies for ad verification?

Residential for web display, search and landing-page checks, where city and ASN targeting matter most. Mobile carrier IPs for in-app ads and carrier-targeted campaigns. TrueProxies sells residential, not mobile; if your campaigns target carriers, pair it with a mobile provider.

Compare residential and mobile proxies for ad verification
Are datacenter proxies good for ad verification?

Rarely. Invalid-traffic guidelines treat known data-center traffic as non-human, so many ad stacks filter it or serve it different ads, and a cloaked campaign shows datacenter visitors a clean page. Datacenter IPs are fine for checking redirect status codes where cloaking is not a risk.

Can I use IPv6 proxies for ad verification?

Only for part of the job. An IPv6-only exit cannot load ad or landing-page hosts that have no AAAA record, and IPv6 geolocation is less consistent than IPv4. Use residential IPv4 for verification; Datacenter IPv6 suits dual-stack targets you have tested first.

How much does ad verification with proxies cost?

It depends on what each check loads. A redirect-chain check that reads whole documents measured 0.8 MB at the median; a full render with a screenshot measured 3.8 MB. At 3.8 MB per check, 1,000 checks use 3.8 GB: $6.23 at the 1 GB traffic pack rate ($1.64/GB) or $2.28 at the 5,000 GB traffic pack rate ($0.60/GB). The cost table above shows every measured size.

See the cost per check math
Can I verify ads in several countries at the same time?

Yes. Open one session per market, each with its own country or city targeting on the username, and run the checks in parallel. Log the exit IP reference, location and timestamp with every capture so results from different markets stay comparable.

Can I check Google or Meta ads in another country without a proxy?

Partly. Google's Ads Transparency Center and Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, and Meta's Ad Library, show ads by region for free. They do not show how ads render on publisher sites, what a cloaked landing page serves locally, or localized prices. Proxies cover those gaps.

How to see ads in other countries
Which TrueProxies plan should I use for ad verification?

Residential IPv4 GB-based: city, region and ASN targeting, 1 GB for $1.64 and down to $0.60/GB on large traffic packs, which covers most ad checks. Residential IPv4 Unlimited for high-volume monitoring where country- or city-level targeting is enough, priced by speed from $4.08 per hour. Datacenter IPv6 is not built for ad verification.

What can't a proxy check prove?

A check shows what one IP, location and session received at one moment. It does not prove what every user saw, measure viewability, or detect invalid traffic at scale. Treat it as evidence for a specific claim and record the method with each capture.

Is there a free trial for ad verification proxies?

Yes: the Free hour, one hour of Residential IPv4 Unlimited at 10 Mbps with country and city targeting, no card and no automatic charge. ASN checks need a GB-based plan, which starts with the 1 GB traffic pack for $1.64 and has no trial.

Free trial terms

Related use cases

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Free trial

Record what selected, verified exits return.

Start a trial and test it on your own workload.

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