Live watch and pauses
With live watch, Shield keeps checking a channel while your Shield-on ad runs there. If an unsafe post appears right next to your ad, Shield pauses the ad, settles the run and tells both sides why. This page explains the watch, the money and the appeal.
Live watch runs for Shield-on bookings made on Plus, Elite, Master and Ultimate. On Free and Lite the booking check still runs at checkout, but nothing is watched during the run.
What live watch checks
While your ad is live, every new post the channel publishes within 60 minutes of the ad, before or after it, is checked against your profile. The words of each post are read once for the check and deleted within the hour. Only the verdict and a link to the post are kept.
Live watch only runs where the channel owner accepted a Shield-on booking. It never watches any other channel.
When an ad is paused
When a post next to your ad matches your profile, Shield pauses the ad. A pause settles the booking at that moment:
Diagram A pause settles the run at the moment it happens. Nobody is charged for time the ad was not up.
- You get back the unserved share. The part of the booking for the time left in the window is refunded to your wallet as balance you can spend but not withdraw, like other Paid Promotions refunds.
- The owner keeps the served share. The owner is paid for the time the ad was up. A pause is not a delivery failure, and the owner's reliability score does not change.
- The ad is removed from the channel by the bot.
- Both sides are told on the website and in the bot, with the reason and a link to the post that caused the pause. The channel owner reads your keywords and websites only as "One of the advertiser's private rules", with no link when the post matched only those.
- The brand-safe tag of the channel moves only when the post is in a category the platform never allows; your own blocklist never moves it.
Plus plan · Advertiser — an ad the live watch paused 1 The paused booking and the refund of its unserved share. 2 The link to the post on Telegram that caused the pause. 3 Appeal this.
Appealing a pause or a verdict
Either side can appeal: the advertiser if they think a pause or a verdict was wrong, the owner if they think the post was not unsafe for that profile.
- Open the incident under Incidents, or the scan under Your scans, on the Brand Safety page.
- Press Appeal this, write what the check got wrong, and press Send the appeal.
- A person reviews it. You are told the decision on the website and in the bot.
If an appeal finds the pause was wrong, our team can reverse the incident or mark it a false alarm; the incident then reads Reversed by our team or Marked a false alarm, and the decision says what changes for each side.