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Checking your ads and affiliate links from a real French mobile connection
See your ads and redirects as a French mobile user does: what ad platforms' tools show, what a mobile IP adds, and the traps.
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A campaign targeted at "mobile, France" cannot be checked from a desktop computer on a fiber connection. What users see depends on their country, their device and sometimes their carrier. Here is how to put yourself in their place, and when it is not necessary.
Start with the free tools
Before paying for a line, use what the ad platforms provide:
| Need | Free tool |
|---|---|
| Seeing your own Google ad without skewing the statistics | The Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, in Google Ads |
| Seeing a competitor's ads on Google | Google's Ads Transparency Center |
| Seeing active ads on Facebook and Instagram | Meta's Ad Library |
For most routine checks, these tools are enough.
What they do not show
The real path after the click. An ad leads to a chain of redirects: trackers, affiliate network, landing page. Some steps change depending on the user's country, device or carrier. Only a real French mobile connection walks the chain the way your visitors do.
Carrier targeting. In mobile affiliate marketing, some offers are only shown to subscribers of one specific carrier. An Orange line sees what an Orange subscriber sees; an SFR line, what an SFR subscriber sees.
Hijacking of your links. An unscrupulous partner can redirect part of the traffic elsewhere, only for mobile visitors from a given country, knowing that you check from your office. A connection that looks like your visitors' reveals it.
Mistakes to avoid
Clicking your own ads. Even through a proxy, a click on your Google ad is a click you pay for, and a practice that breaks the ad platform's rules. To see the ad, use the preview tool.
Cloaking. Showing one page to the ad platform's reviewers and another to users is forbidden by every ad platform. This page is about checking what your visitors see, never about fooling a review.
Trusting city-level geolocation. Mobile addresses geolocate poorly: they are often attached to Paris or to the carrier's region, whatever the real location. For a campaign targeted at a city, a mobile line will tell you "France", rarely better.
How to organize it
- One browser profile per carrier to check, each set to its proxy, in mobile mode (or on a real phone, see Android and iPhone).
- Clear cookies and history between two checks: an affiliate redirect often remembers the first visit.
- Change IP to check that a behavior is not specific to one address: see Changing your IP.
Which plan
| Need | What fits |
|---|---|
| Occasional checks | A 24-hour or 7-day plan |
| Regular monitoring, with rotation | A plan with unlimited rotation |
| A specific carrier | Contact us: it is a custom request |
FAQ
Isn't a residential proxy enough?
For checking country targeting on desktop, yes: a residential network covers many countries and cities, which a French mobile line does not. The mobile line is the right choice when your ads target French mobile users, and when the carrier matters.
Do ad platforms see that I am using a proxy?
They see an ordinary French mobile connection. That is precisely why it must not be used to generate impressions or clicks: that would be invalid traffic, and your budget would pay for it.
See also: Why a French IP · Testing your proxy
Need a French mobile proxy? A real French 4G/5G line, one HTTP port and one SOCKS5 port, IP rotation on demand.
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