Weight & build
Use of raw IP
What Google's rule says
Google's rule reads: ad calls must be made to domains — not IP addresses — to fetch creative, tracking pixels, and other ad serving or ad tracking elements. Authorized Buyers reports it as the ad making a call to a numeric IP address.
What actually causes it
- A staging or origin host left in a tag as an IP because DNS was not ready when it was built.
- A CDN fallback that resolves to a literal address when the primary hostname fails.
- A hardcoded internal endpoint in a dynamic creative's data call.
- A tracking pixel copied from a system that emits addresses rather than names.
How to fix it
Search the tag for numeric hosts, including inside redirect chains and inside any JSON the creative fetches. Replace each with a hostname that resolves to the same service — the fix is a DNS record, not a creative change.
The part that is not obvious
Nothing here depends on the address being private or suspicious. Any numeric literal fails, including one pointing at a perfectly ordinary public CDN, because the rule exists so that every host a creative touches can be identified and held to account by name. The practical consequence is that this violation typically appears on a creative that renders and clicks through flawlessly — QA finds nothing wrong, because there is nothing wrong with the behaviour, only with how the destination was written.
Related reasons
Reason name verified against Troubleshoot creatives rejected by Display & Video 360 or Google Ad Manager on 30 July 2026. The causes and fix above are practitioner guidance, not Google policy text.