Ad Creative QA Checklist: Catch Mistakes Before Your Ads Go Live

The QA Checklist for Ad Creative

At first glance, your ad creative looks on-point — punchy copy, on-brand visuals, and scroll-stopping design. But even the best-looking ads can slip through with typos, broken formatting, or off-spec videos. In fact, it happens more often than brands and marketers like to admit.

According to IAB Tech Lab, nearly 1 in 3 display ads contain serious quality issues, from file size problems to rendering bugs. That’s why a strong QA process for creative is non-negotiable. It’s how you catch avoidable mistakes and make sure your ads look flawless once they go live.

Below, we’ll walk through how to perform thorough QA checks on ad creatives to ensure they meet your standards before launch.

What Is Ad Creative QA?

Ad creative QA (Quality Assurance) is the process of carefully reviewing your ad creatives before they go live. Back in school, you’d call this proofreading. In advertising, it’s called creative QA — a focused check on visuals, copy, formatting, and overall presentation.

When done right, it helps you avoid launching broken, confusing, or off-brand creatives, whether it’s a UGC video, display ad, or story placement. No matter the format, creative QA ensures your ads look polished, meet platform specs, and land the right message with your audience.

Why is QA Important?

Not sure if reviewing your ad creatives is worth the time? Let’s explore why the process is essential:

Protects your brand by ensuring only polished, professional creatives go live.
Improves ad performance by allowing time for testing and optimisation.
Ensures compliance with platform policies and industry standards.
Builds trust and credibility with clean, error-free visuals and messaging.
Prevents last-minute fixes and reduces wasted ad spend.
Streamlines collaboration by giving your team a clear review workflow.

Ultimately, QA typically results in better-performing ads, fewer headaches, and a smoother path from concept to campaign launch.

Ad Creative QA Checklist

To review ad creatives efficiently, break it down into three areas: technical checks, content accuracy, and performance optimisation. Use the checklist below to catch issues before launching.

Step 1: Technical Checks

First, you have to make sure your ads actually work. This step ensures the file runs smoothly, meets platform specs, and won’t break once it’s live.

Watch the ad from start to finish — check for glitches, missing frames, or awkward cuts.
Check audio and video tracks: is the volume balanced? Are the colours off? Any background noise?
Confirm the ad’s duration (15s, 30s, etc.) matches platform requirements.
Verify aspect ratio (9:16, 1:1, 4:5, etc.) and test how it renders across devices.
Test all interactive elements, such as buttons, links, or overlays, to ensure they direct users to the intended destination.
Make sure key visuals and text aren’t too close to the edges or too small for mobile screens.
View the creative on mobile. Is it legible, well-framed, and platform-safe?
For display or web ads, check load speed — slow-loading creatives lose attention fast.

Pro tip: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts each have different overlays and UI elements that can block or crop parts of your creative. Always preview your ad on the actual platform to ensure your text, logos, and CTAs appear where they should.

Step 2: Content Accuracy

With the technical aspects sorted, it’s time to ensure everything in your ad is clear, accurate, and on-brand. Remember, even the small mistakes can hurt a brand's credibility:

Double-check all text for typos, spelling errors, and grammar, including overlays, subtitles, and captions.
Ensure all stats, claims, and bold messaging are accurate and backed by reliable sources.
Follow your brand guidelines for fonts, colours, logos, and tone to maintain consistency.
Be mindful of cultural sensitivities to avoid offending any group or audience.
Confirm that you have permission to use user-generated content and provide proper credit where necessary.
Make sure the creative is easy to read and view on both desktop and mobile.

Pro tip: Don’t just review your ad creative in edit mode. Play it through in full screen, on a phone, and with fresh eyes. Things like awkward line breaks, clashing colours, or irrelevant or clunky phrasing often stand out more when you view it like a real user would.

Step 3: Optimise for Performance

Now it's time to optimise your ad for performance. This involves examining the elements that drive those crucial clicks and conversions.

Make sure your hook grabs attention — if it doesn’t stop you, it probably won’t stop your audience.
Ensure your message flows logically. Put your primary message first and avoid confusing jumps between topics.
Eliminate awkward pauses or delays, which will help keep the pacing tight.
Make the ad visually engaging. Can zooms, cuts, or transitions add energy?
Consider any emotional responses you want to evoke. Does the ad evoke the right feelings?
Ensure your CTA is clear and easy to act upon.
Evaluate the message — does it clearly explain the offer and make people care?

Pro tip: Don’t test just for the sake of it. Focus on refining your strongest angles rather than pushing out 10 variations with minor differences. Fewer, better creatives often outperform high-volume testing when each version is built with intent.

Who Should Perform the Creative QA?

It’s totally fine to have a small team — in fact, it’s often better. While Creative QA is a shared responsibility, too many cooks can spoil the broth. Passing the baton between departments often leads to confusion and delays.

To avoid that, limit the final QA process to just one or two reviewers. The final reviewer should fully understand the creative direction, campaign objective, target audience, and brand guidelines. This could be a media buyer, performance lead, creative strategist or anyone who has a deep understanding of the project.

Getting early input from multiple team members is valuable, but final sign-off should rest with one person. It ensures consistency, avoids unnecessary revisions, and helps get stronger ads out the door, faster.

Conclusion: A Strong QA Process Leads to Better Ads

Following a solid ad creative QA process might feel like an extra step, but it pays off. When you check every detail, from tech specs to messaging, your ads will look better, work better, and perform better.

The key is having a clear process or checklist that covers all aspects of production, from ideation to final sign-off. It streamlines reviews, reduces confusion, and keeps your creatives consistent across every placement.

So next time you’re prepping a campaign, don’t skip QA. Put in the time to get it right — and see the difference it makes.

Get your QA right, and your ads will perform better, build trust, and drive results. Small effort, big impact.

Take Your Ad Creatives to the Next Level with MagicBrief

Quality assurance is essential — but it only matters if your ads are engaging to begin with. That’s where MagicBrief comes in. Whether you’re a DTC brand looking to scale production or an agency managing multiple clients, MagicBrief gives you the tools to create, organise, and optimise ad creatives that actually perform.

Here’s how it helps:

Built-in Ad Library: Browse thousands of high-performing ads from top brands across industries, perfect for inspiration and competitive insight.

Creative Organisation: Save, tag, and categorise your ideas, assets, and campaigns. Whether you’re working solo or collaborating with a team, everything stays in one place.
Performance Insights: Learn what’s working (and why). MagicBrief highlights your top-performing creatives based on your preferred metrics.