meta-externalads is Meta's ad-landing-page crawler. When an advertiser submits a destination URL for an ad placed on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network, this bot fetches the landing page to assess policy compliance, brand safety, and to render preview thumbnails.

At a glance

Operator: Meta
Type: Advertising

How Centinel checks it

User agent: The request calls itself this crawler. Anyone can send the same string.

meta-externalads publishes nothing Centinel can check a source against, so a match reports the name and leaves the source unconfirmed. The match tokens, verification domains, and address feeds are not published here.

Allowing or blocking it

The crawler object in the /validate response sets access_allowed to true only for a verified source that your tenant allowlists. A policy rule can allow or block this crawler by its category, Advertising.

Back to the crawler catalog