If your campaign is not matching to an ad that you believe aired, we recommend these quick troubleshooting steps:
1. Confirm with the publisher the ad ran
The ad may have been cancelled or re-scheduled by the publisher. Confirm with them that the ad ran, and in which episode.
2. Is the episode transcribed?
From the show page, first confirm the episode has been transcribed. You can check this in the Ads (Ad load) column; if there’s a number of ads shown, it means the episode has been transcribed (though not necessarily that your ad has been found). You can also open the episode to confirm a transcript is available.
If the episode is not yet transcribed and it’s been at least 24 hours since being published, please:
- confirm your campaign is for the right show (step 5 below)
- confirm the episode’s publish date falls between your campaign’s start & end date (step 6 below)
- contact support (support@podscribe.com). Episodes should be automatically transcribed by our system within 24 hours of the published date, so there may be an issue with either our system or the episode’s audio.
3. Is the ad labeled correctly in the transcript?
After confirming the episode has been transcribed, open the episode side panel containing the ad. Is the ad appearing in the Advertiser section?
If the advertiser name does not appear, or appears differently from what is shown on your Campaign page, click “View the Podcast’s Transcript.”
Search for the ad in the transcript. If it does not appear, proceed to step 4 to refetch the episode.
If the ad is visible in the transcript, use the transcript editor to label the ad or correct the advertiser name.
Wrong advertiser names can occur when a campaign is correctly associated with one advertiser, but the system misinterprets the ad as belonging to a different, similarly sounding advertiser. A quick fix is to relabel the aircheck. If the system repeatedly confuses your advertiser with another, please email support@podscribe.com so we can merge the advertisers.
Correcting ad labels using the transcript editor:
1. Click the pencil icon to edit the transcript.
- Find the advertiser mention in the text (for example,
Nike). Once located, click the human/pencil icon next to that section of the transcript. If the ad copy is split across multiple paragraphs, use enter/backspace to combine the ad text into a single paragraph.
- Next, check
Is Ad?then in the “Advertiser name” field, find the ad or type in the advertiser name (e.g., Nike), then click “Update”
- After correcting the ad label, wait 1–2 hours for the ad to be matched to the campaign. If it still does not match, please reach out to support@podscribe.com.
4. The ad is not in the transcript, but still believe it aired? Re-fetch the episode.
If you don’t see the ad in the episode transcript, the version Podscribe downloaded may not have included the ad. The ad may still appear in another version of the same episode. Have Podscribe refetch and re-analyze the episode audio with the refresh button on the episode page. When you click this, it will allow you to refetch or request a transcript for different versions.
If you now see the ad in the new transcript version, wait a few hours as our system should automatically label and match the ad to your campaign.
5. Is the campaign for the correct show?
Occasionally a campaign may point to the wrong version of a show, perhaps a duplicate with a similar name, or an outdated version of the show.
You can verify which show your campaign is linked to by clicking the show artwork on the Campaign page to open the show page:
From the show page, verify that the Apple Podcast ID or YouTube channel/playlist URL points to the correct show.
If the show is pointing to the incorrect show, you can fix it by following this guide. If the “Change” icon is not visible, contact support@podscribe.com and we will fix it for you.
Alternatively, if the campaign was created on the dashboard, you can duplicate the campaign, create a new one pointing to the correct show, and then archive the original campaign after the new one is set up. Note that this is only recommended for baked-in campaigns.
6. Is the ad episode’s publish date within the campaign date range?
If the ad is labeled correctly, the campaign points to the right show, confirm that the publish date of the episode containing the ad falls within the start/end date of the campaign. This is required for our system to match the ad to a campaign.
Baked-In and Faked-In campaigns only report impressions if an ad is matched to them.
If the campaign date range needs adjusting to contain the episode’s publish date, click the Edit Campaign pencil icon to edit your campaign’s start/end dates.
If your campaign is imported from a Google Sheet, update the start and end dates in the Google Sheet, then click the “Import Now” button so Podscribe can re-sync the sheet. If this button is not visible on your dashboard, please contact support@podscribe.com and we can sync it for you.
7. Is the ad matching to another campaign on this show?
An ad can only match to one campaign. Check if there is another campaign for this advertiser & show with a similar date range that the ad is matched to.
8. Does the campaign’s geo match the geo of the ad’s transcript?
If a campaign has an international geo (e.g., Australia), it will only match to ads downloaded in that geo.
Confirm that the campaign’s geo matches the geo of the episode transcript. If it is incorrect, update the campaign geo or follow the previous steps to ensure the ad is labeled in a transcript from the correct campaign geo.
9. Wait at least 24 hours?
Once the ad is properly labeled and the campaign details are correct, please wait at least 1–2 hours. Most ads are matched within 1 hour of being detected, though in some cases it may take longer. If the ad still has not matched to the campaign 24 hours after the episode launch, please contact support@podscribe.com.
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