A rule book, not a black box

Three deterministic tools, one rule book. The ad audit runs 62 versioned patterns against your copy in the selected vertical; the landing-page audit checks the page your ad sends traffic to; the competitor benchmark scores you against up to 5 rivals with the same engine. Here's exactly what each one checks.

The 16 rule categories

Each family maps to published ad-platform or regulator guidance. Every finding names the policy, quotes the full offending sentence, and ships with fix guidance.

1. Unsubstantiated superlatives

Google/Meta — Misleading Claims & Exaggerated Guarantees

Catches best, #1, top-rated, finest, cheapest, lowest prices, nobody beats our prices, unbeatable — with smart exclusions so "we do our best" and "best practices" don't get flagged.

2. Absolute guarantees

Google/Meta — Misleading Claims & Exaggerated Guarantees

Catches money-back, 100% guaranteed, iron-clad guarantee, that's a promise, on the house, satisfaction guaranteed — promises that need visible terms or they read as exaggerated guarantees.

3. Financial & savings claims

Google/Meta — Misleading Claims & Exaggerated Guarantees

Catches save you up to $X, save $500, money back in your pocket, pays for itself, cut your bills by X% — projected-savings claims that need a disclosed basis.

4. Personal attributes

Meta/Facebook — Personal Attributes (Section 4.6.2)

Catches are you struggling…, tired of YOUR old AC, you're overpaying, if you're like most homeowners, homeowners like you, your family's safety — Meta bans asserting or implying the viewer's personal attributes.

5. Safety claims

EPA, FTC Regulations & Ad Networks — Safety Claims Standards

Catches 100% safe, completely safe, harmless to children and pets, chemical-free, all-natural, non-toxic, zero risk, kills … on contact, wipes out … on contact — absolute safety/efficacy claims regulators prohibit.

6. Google editorial standards

Google Ads — Editorial & Professional Standards

Catches ALL-CAPS shouting, excessive punctuation (!!), gimmicky symbols and emoji, repeated words, and phone numbers stuffed into ad text — Google-only, ad-copy only.

7. "Free" claims (US)

FTC — Free Guides Concerning Use of the Word "Free"

Catches inflated "free" offers, missing disclosures on conditions, and strikethrough "regular price" tricks — US region only.

8. Pricing honesty (UK)

UK ASA CAP Code 3.17–3.22

Catches VAT-excluded prices and vague "from £X" pricing — UK region only.

9. "Free" claims (UK)

UK ASA CAP Code 3.23–3.24

Catches "free" offers with vague conditions or hidden extra charges — UK region only.

10. Testimonials (UK)

UK ASA CAP Code 3.45–3.48

Catches unsourced testimonials and star ratings with no review platform named — UK region only.

11. Fair housing (real estate)

HUD / Fair Housing Act

Catches familial-status, disability, religion, and gendered language in housing ads — "no kids", "perfect for singles", "church-goers welcome". Real-estate vertical only.

12. Dental advertising

CA B&P 1680(l), TX Occ. Code 254.002(9)

Catches guaranteed outcomes, "painless" claims, unjustified expectations, and discount ads with no total fee disclosed. Dental vertical only.

13. Legal advertising

ABA Model Rules 7.1, 7.4

Catches guaranteed case outcomes, uncertified "specialist"/"expert" claims, and misleading testimonials. Legal vertical only.

14. UK estate agents

CAP Code 3.1, 3.7; NTS Estate Agency Guidance

Catches false "sold" status claims and unverifiable years-experience claims in UK property ads — UK region only.

15. Urgency & scarcity

Google/Meta — Misrepresentation: Unreliable Claims

Catches "only 3 left", "offer ends tonight", "limited time", "act now" pressure tactics with no genuine basis.

16. Bare license claims

Google/Meta — Misrepresentation: Unreliable Claims

Catches bare "insured" / "bonded" with no verifiable credential — the report says "couldn't confirm — verify manually" instead of quoting it as proof.

How scoring works

No mystery math. The score is arithmetic on the findings — and the verdict is one of three labels. The tool pre-screens; it never blesses an ad as safe to launch.

HIGH RISK
any HIGH finding
NEEDS REVIEW
MEDIUM finding or gray-zone triggers
CLEAR
no findings, no triggers
Exactly how is the score computed?
Findings are grouped by sentence: one sentence appears once, with every rule it triggered listed beneath it. Start at 100. Subtract 20 per HIGH-severity sentence, 8 per MEDIUM-severity sentence. A sentence deducts once, at its highest severity. No floor, no cap — a page with many violations scores distinguishably lower than one with a few. Verdict: any HIGH → HIGH RISK; otherwise any MEDIUM or gray-zone trigger → NEEDS REVIEW; otherwise CLEAR. Landing-page audits combine page checks (phone, license, CTA, service area) and ad-policy findings into this single score.
What is the gray zone?
Promotional triggers like "free", "guarantee", "limited time", or a bare percentage that don't match a hard violation pattern. They land in a "needs human review" bucket with the triggers listed — a person decides, not the engine.
How does the license check work?
A data-driven table of 70 license-format entries across 33 US states plus the UK — letters, #, digits — like ROC #276078 or TECL #19787. Matching is case-insensitive (except ALL-CAPS editorial checks). Plain numbers ("10 years in business") never match. If nothing matches, the report says so plainly instead of inventing a license. Formats not yet verified from an official source are never treated as matches.

Landing Page Audit

Enter the page link — we open it and run every check on what we find. If a page can't be opened automatically, you can paste its content instead. Six deterministic check groups, same HIGH RISK / NEEDS REVIEW / CLEAR verdicts, same full-sentence evidence. Run a page audit →

Phone extraction & consistency

Finds every US-format number plus all tel: links. The link wins on conflict — a stale visible number next to a current tap-to-call link gets flagged HIGH.

License credential detection

State patterns (OR CCB, CA CSLB, AZ ROC, WA, TX, FL…) plus generic numbered-license formats. A bare "licensed" with no credential is never quoted as proof — the report says "couldn't confirm — verify manually."

Business name consistency

Compares the page title/headline name against body mentions (case- and punctuation-insensitive). Mismatches confuse visitors and hurt local search.

Call-to-action inventory

Counts call, quote, booking, contact, and form CTAs. Zero CTAs is a HIGH finding — visitors are never told what to do next.

Trust signals

Years in business, reviews and ratings, guarantees and warranties, insured/bonded wording — recorded as strengths when found, never invented.

Service area signal

Looks for "serving" areas, street addresses, and ZIP codes. A page that never says where it works gets flagged.

Page structure

Title tag present and under 60 characters, exactly one H1, at least one internal link. Basic SEO hygiene the engines expect.

Ad-to-page match

If you audited an ad in the same session, compares headline, offer, and phone number between the ad and the page. Mismatches kill conversions.

Competitor Benchmark

Paste your ad and up to 5 competitor ads or page texts you found yourself — automatic competitor discovery isn't included, and the page says so honestly. The same 62-pattern engine scores every entry, then derives the comparison. Run a benchmark →

1

Side-by-side table

Score, verdict, per-family violation counts, license presence, and trust-signal counts for you and each competitor — plus the competitor average row.

2

You vs. the average

Your score against the competitor mean, and per-family wins and losses derived from the violation counts. Fewer violations than average is a win.

3

Top 3 gaps to fix

Your own findings grouped by violation family, HIGH first — with the same fix guidance as the ad audit. Derived from your copy only; nothing is invented about competitors.

Agency name field stamps the printed header for white-label client reports.

Deterministic, not AI

An AI audit can say something different every run and hallucinate evidence. A rule engine can't. Same ad in, same verdict out — and when it misses, the fix is legible: add a pattern, add a regression test, bump the version. Every report is stamped with the policy version it was judged against (currently v—).

What a report looks like

MOCK PREVIEW — styled mock of a report layout, not a real audit.

TradesAd Suite™ — Ad Audit ReportPolicy Engine v—
HIGHGoogle/Meta — Misleading Claims & Exaggerated Guarantees

"Nobody beats our prices — that's a promise."

How to fix: State the actual terms instead of absolute language: timeframe, conditions, and how the customer claims it.

MEDIUMMeta/Facebook — Personal Attributes (4.6.2)

"If you're like most homeowners, you're overpaying for energy."

How to fix: Describe the problem in general terms instead of the reader.

White-label reports for agencies

Pro Agency reports print clean — no tool chrome, just the verdict, the evidence, and the fixes — ready to hand to a client with your branding. Every report carries the policy version stamp, so a client can see exactly which rule book their ad was judged against.

See agency pricing