Mistake: cloaker blocks your own tracking pixel

Mistake: cloaker blocks your own tracking pixel

Failure mode: your filter or cloaker serves a safe page to anything that looks like a bot — and your own server-side check, uptime monitor, or postback validator gets the safe page too. Conversions log against the wrong landing.

Fix — checklist:
— List every internal service that touches your funnel: uptime pinger, tracker S2S, QA scripts, network test traffic.
— Whitelist their IPs and user agents in the filter before launch. Network test postbacks especially must reach the money page.
— Never cloak based on "empty referer" alone — direct test visits have empty referer and so does legitimate app traffic.
— Keep the whitelist in version control with a date and reason per entry. Stale whitelist entries are a leak.
— Test from a clean device on mobile data, not from your office IP, which may already be whitelisted.

Verify: run the network's official test link. It must reach the offer and fire a clean conversion end to end.

Save this SOP. Run this before every launch.