Video
Video VAST is malformed
What Google's rule says
Authorized Buyers states that the ad is disapproved because a VAST creative is not as expected. Google's rejected-creatives page describes the neighbouring condition as a video ad that is not rendering, not clicking through, not functioning, or containing an empty VAST XML file.
What actually causes it
- A tag that returns an HTML error page with a 200 status instead of XML.
- An unescaped ampersand in a tracking URL, which is invalid XML unless the URL is in CDATA.
- A required element missing — commonly AdSystem, AdTitle, Impression or Duration.
- An empty VAST document, which is a valid no-fill response and an invalid creative.
How to fix it
Fetch the tag URL directly and read what actually comes back before touching the ad server. An empty VAST response and a broken one look identical in reporting and need opposite responses — one is normal no-fill, the other is a fault.
The part that is not obvious
The empty-document case is the one that wastes days. An empty VAST body is how a legitimate no-fill is expressed, so the same response that is correct behaviour from a demand partner is a disapproval when it comes from the creative you trafficked. Which of the two you are looking at depends entirely on what the tag was supposed to be, and no amount of inspecting the response will tell you. Note also that this reason is judged on the document Google fetched, not on the one in your ad server — a wrapper that resolves differently at review time than at serve time produces a disapproval nobody can reproduce.
Tools that help here
Related reasons
Reason name verified against Common ad disapproval reasons — Authorized Buyers Help on 30 July 2026. The causes and fix above are practitioner guidance, not Google policy text.