Paid Media Destination Continuity Monitor: Affiliate Link QA

Check whether the landing pages your ads point to still work, and, for Shopify products, whether the advertised variant is still buyable. Optionally inspect affiliate redirect chains and tracking parameters. Paste destination URLs (and optional Shopify variant IDs), click Start, and get one clear row per destination with the impacted ad IDs fanned out. Sold out and broken stay separate from blocked, timeout and unknown.

Promise: detect broken affiliate redirects and unexpected tracking changes. This Actor does not claim commission attribution.

No login, no cookies, no proxy, no campaign edits. Default mode is a fast HTTPS GET. Optional Shopify checks use the documented public Ajax product endpoint. Set renderMode to browser only when you need a headless Chromium render for JavaScript or meta-refresh redirects (use 1024 MB for those runs).

Built and maintained by LatentLark. Pair with Shopify Variant Availability & Price Evidence Monitor for deeper variant watchlists, or send rows to Sheets with Google Sheets Export & Import (No OAuth).

Who it's for

• PPC / paid-social operators who waste spend when a live ad lands on a 404, a wrong domain, or a sold-out product.
• Small agencies watching several clients' Meta, TikTok, Google or LinkedIn destinations on a schedule.
• DTC / Shopify brands who want a cheap Apify/n8n-friendly continuity check without connecting ad accounts to a SaaS.

Quick start (first run in under a minute)

1. Click Try for free (or Start in Console). The form is prefilled with:
   • https://example.com/ expects domain example.com and the text Example Domain
   • Shopify's public Dawn theme demo product Thelma sandal, variant 39576998346841 (Black / 35), for the optional stock check
2. Click Start. The demo run takes a few seconds, writes 2 rows, and lists about $0.013 in events (2 × $0.004 destinations + 1 × $0.005 Shopify) plus a few tenths of a cent of platform usage.
3. Replace the destinations with your own ad URLs. Label each row with your adId. Cap: 25 ads, 15 unique URLs, 3 Shopify products, 80 requests per run (timeout cap 180 seconds; the Store example stays at 90).
4. To confirm failures across runs (two-strike), Save as task and add a Schedule (for example, hourly or daily), or pass previousSnapshot from an earlier OUTPUT.

What you can do with it

• Landing health: HTTP status, redirect chain (each hop revalidated), final URL, expected-domain match.
• Assertion checks: require offer text (Add to cart, a promo string) or forbid sold-out copy.
• Shopify buyability: optional /products/{handle}.js check for a selected variant, using the same read-only source as our Shopify monitor.
• Two-strike confirmed failures: a destination becomes confirmedFailure only after two consecutive failure observations. Timeouts, 403s and other unknowns never count as a strike and never overwrite the last good baseline.
• Impacted-ad fan-out: several ads can share one URL; one check updates every linked adId.

Example: the prefilled demo

Input (this is the form prefill):

{
  "ads": [
    {
      "adId": "demo-example",
      "platform": "other",
      "destinationUrl": "https://example.com/",
      "expectedDomain": "example.com",
      "requiredText": ["Example Domain"],
      "label": "landing-ok"
    },
    {
      "adId": "demo-dawn",
      "platform": "other",
      "destinationUrl": "https://theme-dawn-demo.myshopify.com/products/thelma-sandal",
      "expectedDomain": "theme-dawn-demo.myshopify.com",
      "shopifyProductUrl": "https://theme-dawn-demo.myshopify.com/products/thelma-sandal",
      "variantId": "39576998346841",
      "label": "dawn-demo-variant"
    }
  ]
}

Real output from a private platform run on 9 November 2026 (fields shortened):

adIds	destinationStatus	httpStatus	shopifyAvailability	chargedDestination	chargedShopify
demo-example	ok	200		true	false
demo-dawn	ok	200	out_of_stock	true	true

The Dawn Black / 35 variant was sold out on that demo store when the run was taken; other variants of the same product can still be in stock. Live demos can change. The first OOS observation is oos_pending_confirmation. A second consecutive OOS on a scheduled task sets confirmedShopifyFailure.

Affiliate redirect and parameter QA

Use this when you need to check tracking links as well as landing pages.

• Redirect-chain inspection: every hop is recorded (status, URL, query parameters present). You can see where a required parameter disappears, is renamed, or changes value.
• Configurable validation: pass requiredParams globally or per link (name, optional expectedValue, aliases, severity). paramRules supports per-hop mayDrop / mayRename rules and aliases. Built-in rules cover common Awin, Impact, CJ and Amazon-style hosts.
• Missing is not an automatic failure. Default severity is warning. Networks legitimately consume or swap parameters (for example Awin awinaffid may become awc). Mark a rule severity: "error" only when a drop should fail the tracking check. Landing status and tracking status are separate fields.
• Expected destination: expectedDomain still flags a final host outside the merchant domain you named.
• Change alerts: the Actor stores a snapshot keyed by an input hash and, on the next run of the same watchlist, reports newly broken links, a changed final destination, or a changed parameter outcome.
• Render modes: http (default, fast) follows Location headers, and can follow meta-refresh plus simple location.href / location.replace assignments. browser uses a full headless render. The Store prefill stays on http and should finish in well under 2 minutes.
• You can pass the same URLs as ads (existing input, fully backward compatible) or as links with a url field. Classic ads-only runs keep the previous behaviour, including robots.txt checks. Set respectRobots: false when you are inspecting specific tracking URLs you own and a network robots.txt would otherwise block the check.

Example: one Awin-style link (not the Store prefill)

{
  "links": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=1234&awinaffid=9999&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2F",
      "expectedDomain": "example.com",
      "requiredParams": [
        { "name": "awinaffid", "expectedValue": "9999", "aliases": ["awc"], "severity": "warning" }
      ],
      "label": "awin-example"
    }
  ],
  "respectRobots": false,
  "renderMode": "http"
}

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price	When it is charged
Destination resolved (destination-resolved)	$0.004 per unique URL	Classic ads-only landing classification (ok, broken, assertion_failed, or redirect_domain_mismatch)
Shopify product check (shopify-product-check)	$0.005 per successful product classification	Ajax product document classifies the selected variant
HTTP link check (link-checked)	$0.0015 per unique URL	Affiliate / tracking-link HTTP checks that reach a full classification
Browser link check (link-checked-browser)	$0.005 per unique URL	The same classification after a full browser render
Actor start	none	Not charged

A unique URL is never charged for both destination-resolved and a link-check event. link-checked and link-checked-browser are new paid events. If Apify places them on a notice period, they start on the platform effective date; until then a billable landing still uses destination-resolved at $0.004. Blocked, timeout, unknown, rate-limited, invalid-input and request-budget rows stay free.

• Shopify free: blocked, unknown, missing available field, or product 404.
• Cheap to run: the Store prefill (2 destinations + 1 Shopify check) lists about $0.013 in events plus a few tenths of a cent of platform usage, and finishes in well under 2 minutes at 256 MB. Example: 10 classic destinations daily for 30 days ≈ 300 × $0.004 = $1.20 in destination events.

Two-strike semantics

Observation	Effect on strikes
broken, assertion_failed, redirect_domain_mismatch	+1 failure strike
out_of_stock (Shopify)	+1 Shopify OOS strike
ok / in_stock	+1 recovery strike; clears confirmed failure after 2 consecutive oks
unknown, timeout, blocked, rate_limited	No strike. Last good baseline is preserved.

confirmedFailure / confirmedShopifyFailure flip only at strike count ≥ 2 (default confirmFailures). Use a saved task or previousSnapshot so history persists across runs.

Input

Field	Required	What it does
ads	yes	List of destinations. Duplicate URLs are merged; adIds fan out.
ads[].destinationUrl	yes	HTTPS landing URL (read-only GET).
ads[].adId	no	Your ad / campaign id (max 120 chars). Auto-generated if omitted.
ads[].platform	no	Label such as meta, tiktok, google, linkedin, other.
ads[].expectedDomain	no	Final host must match this domain (or a subdomain of it).
ads[].requiredText	no	All substrings must appear in the final HTML body.
ads[].forbiddenText	no	Any substring present fails the assertion (e.g. Sold out).
ads[].shopifyProductUrl + variantId	no	Together enable the Ajax product check for that variant.
ads[].label	no	Your own name for the row. Never sent to the destination.
enableShopifyChecks	no	Default true. Set false to ignore Shopify fields.
previousSnapshot	no	Paste OUTPUT.snapshot from an earlier run.
stateScope	no	Snapshot scope for local / non-task runs. A task ID always wins.
maxAds / maxUniqueUrls / maxRequests / maxShopifyProducts / timeoutSeconds / confirmFailures	no	Lower the hard caps (cannot raise them).

Output

Dataset: one row per unique destination. Main fields:

Field	Meaning
destinationStatus	ok, broken, assertion_failed, redirect_domain_mismatch, unknown, timeout, blocked, …
event, reason, httpStatus, finalUrl	What happened and where
expectedDomainOk, requiredTextOk, forbiddenTextOk, contentHash	Assertion and evidence
adIds, ads	Every ad linked to this URL
consecutiveFailures, confirmedFailure, impactedTransition	Two-strike landing state
shopifyAvailability, confirmedShopifyFailure, shopifyTransition	Optional Shopify state
chargedDestination, chargedShopify, charge reasons	Whether each event was billed
checkedAt, ruleVersion, stateScope, requestsUsed	Run metadata

Key-value store OUTPUT: run summary with charge counts, impactedAdIds for confirmed failures, and snapshot for the next run.

Limits

Cap	Maximum
Ads per run	25
Unique destination URLs	10
Shopify products	3
HTTP requests (robots, landing, Shopify, redirects, one retry)	40
Run time	90 seconds
Memory	256 MB

Inputs over a cap stop before any request and nothing is charged. One request per host per second. Proxies and notifications are refused.

How it works / read-only & ToS notes

• Landing checks are plain HTTPS GETs. Redirects are followed with the same SSRF and public-host rules on every hop.
• Shopify checks call only GET /{locale}/products/{handle}.js (Shopify Ajax Product API) and respect robots.txt.
• Private / link-local targets, credentials in URLs, and non-HTTPS schemes are blocked.
• This Actor does not log into Meta, TikTok, Google or LinkedIn, does not edit campaigns, and does not estimate spend.
• Only monitor destinations and stores you are allowed to check. Public access is not blanket legal permission.

Limitations

• No JavaScript rendering. Bot walls and client-only pages return unknown (free), not broken.
• No proxies. Residential or Apify Proxy input is rejected.
• Shopify currency may be unknown on Ajax product responses (same as our Shopify monitor).
• History needs a task or previousSnapshot. A one-off run cannot confirm a two-strike failure by itself.
• Password-protected Shopify stores and non-Shopify “Shopify-looking” sites are unsupported for the product step.

FAQ

I got unknown or timeout. Was I charged? No for that destination. Only fully classified destinations and successful Shopify classifications are charged.

Why isn't confirmedFailure true after one 404? Two consecutive failure observations are required (default). Save as a task and run again, or pass previousSnapshot.

Can it pause my ads? No. It only reports. Wire Slack/Sheets yourself (for example via n8n) and decide manually.

Do I need the Shopify fields? No. Leave them empty for plain landing QA. Set enableShopifyChecks to false to ignore them entirely.

How is this different from the Shopify Variant Monitor? That Actor is a dedicated variant watchlist with richer price/availability events. This Actor is ad-destination continuity: landing health first, optional Shopify buyability second, with ad-ID fan-out and two-strike confirmation across both layers.

More LatentLark Actors

• Shopify Variant Availability & Price Evidence Monitor: deep restock / sell-out watch on selected variants.
• TikTok Ads Library Scraper: competitor TikTok ads (feed landing URLs into this Actor).
• Google Ads Transparency & LinkedIn Ad Library Scraper: Google and LinkedIn ad creatives.
• Google Sheets Export & Import (No OAuth): send every run's rows to a Sheet.