---
title: "Serving state — what makes an entity actually serve"
description: "The full checklist an impression must pass — active flags up both trees, approval, links and suitability, targeting — and what the edit-page serving pill does and does not tell you."
type: "concept"
audience: [network-manager, admin]
keywords: [serving, not serving, active, pill, approval, moderation, pending, rejected, rules only, linked, default code]
ui_path: "Account → Advertisers → … → banner (header pill)"
---

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/llms.txt. Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. Append .md to any documentation page URL to get its markdown version.

# Serving state — what makes an entity actually serve

"Active" is only one of several switches between a saved banner and a live impression.
This page lists every condition, in the order the platform effectively applies them, and
explains the serving pill shown in banner and placement edit-page headers.

## The full checklist

A banner appears in a placement only when **all** of the following hold at once:

1. **The demand chain is on.** The banner is active, *and* its campaign is active, *and*
   its advertiser is active. Any one toggle off silences the whole branch.
2. **The supply chain is on.** The placement is active, *and* its zone is active, *and*
   its site is active. Deactivating a site silences every placement under it in one click.
3. **Nothing in either chain is deleted.** Deleted entities drop out of ad serving
   entirely, links included.
4. **The banner is approved — if your network moderates.** See
   [Approval and moderation](#approval-and-moderation) below.
5. **The pair is linked and suitable.** A direct link exists with the linking switch on for
   **both** the banner and the placement — or a rules match does, with Rules on at both ends —
   and the banner still fits the placement's type and size
   ([Hierarchy and linking](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/concepts/hierarchy-and-linking.md)).
6. **The request passes targeting.** Pre-targeting on site → zone → placement, then
   targeting on advertiser → campaign → banner
   ([How ad selection works](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/concepts/how-ad-selection-works.md)).
7. **Caps and limits leave room.** Frequency/click/action caps for this viewer aren't
   exhausted, and no impression/click/spend/action limit or budget has been reached —
   limits can auto-stop a campaign entirely. A direct banner must also clear the placement's or
   site's minimum margin, if one is set.
8. **It wins the pick.** Everything above only makes the banner *eligible*; priority,
   weights, and optimization decide who actually serves each request.

Changes to any of these reach live traffic through the ad servers' copy of your settings, not
instantly: some saves take about a second, anything else waits for the full refresh that runs
every 10 minutes by default
([How current the numbers are](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/guides/delivery.md#how-current-the-numbers-are)).

## The serving pill

Banner and placement edit pages carry a pill in the header that answers one specific
question: *is this entity wired to the other side of the bridge?* It appears only to roles that
have the page's **Linked** card, and only while that card's own switch is on. It does not read
the switch on the other side's **Linked** card.

| Pill | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🔴 **Not serving** | No direct links and the entity's own Rules switch is off — nothing can serve from this side. |
| 🟡 **Rules only** | No direct links, but the entity's own Rules switch is on — impressions happen only where rules match. |
| ⚪ **Paused · N** | The entity itself is turned off (and has links or Rules), or every one of its N linked entities is turned off. An entity that is off and has no wiring at all still reads **Not serving**. |
| 🟢 **Serving · N** | N direct links go to entities that are switched on. With a mix of on and off links the pill shows **Serving · active/total**. |

The count is the number of direct links to entities that are not deleted, and "on" is each linked
entity's **own** On/Off switch — not its zone, site, campaign or advertiser.

Clicking the pill scrolls to the linking card. In the red and amber states a banner above
the cards spells out the consequence and offers the fixes: **Link banners / Link
placements**, **Enable Rules** (when your role can), or a shortcut to create the missing
counterpart.

![Banner edit page with the red Not serving pill](https://epom.com/docs-images/ad-server/serving-state/serving-pill-not-serving.webp)

> **Warning:** the pill checks the **direct links plus the On/Off switches of the entity itself and
> of its linked entities** — nothing else. It does not count Rules matches, and it does not look
> at the other side's linking switch or at the parents of either side. A banner can show
> 🟢 *Serving · 12* and still serve zero impressions because the placements' own linking switch is
> off, their zone or site is paused, its campaign or advertiser is paused, a limit is reached, or
> targeting rejects all traffic. Green pill + zero impressions means: work through the
> checklist above, top to bottom, or follow
> [Ad not serving](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/troubleshooting/ad-not-serving.md).

**As a publisher.** The stock Publisher role has no **Linked banners** card, so it sees neither
the pill nor the setup banner. What you control is the supply chain (condition 2) — the
**Active** switches on placement, zone and site — and the pre-targeting half of condition 6, plus
the tag on the page and the placement's **Default code**. Links, rules, campaign targeting, caps
and limits are set by the network. The publisher checklist is in
[Ad not serving](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/troubleshooting/ad-not-serving.md#if-you-are-a-publisher); whatever it
does not explain, the network manager resolves.

Parent entities without children get a similar amber nudge instead: a site with no zones,
a zone with no placements, an advertiser or campaign with nothing under it — the chain
isn't built yet, so there is nothing to wire.

## Approval and moderation

Banner approval has four states — New, Pending, Approved, Rejected — but it blocks serving
only through the moderation grants of the **user who edits the creative**. Moderation is a
property of a *role*, not a network-wide mode: the permissions are **Soft Banners Moderation** and
**Banners Moderation With Deactivation**, both administrator-only, and a user holding **Banners
Approval** is never moderated.

- **No moderation grant** (the case whenever no role holds one): a creative is created
  *Approved*, and approval never interferes with serving.
- **Soft Banners Moderation**: creating a creative sets it to *New*, and editing a
  moderated field of an approved or rejected one resets it to *Pending*, but it **keeps serving**
  while it waits.
- **Banners Moderation With Deactivation**: creating or editing a moderated field resets the
  creative (*New* on create, *Pending* on edit) **and switches it off**. It cannot be activated
  again until a reviewer approves it — attempts are refused with "Banner can't be activated until
  it is approved". Approving clears the verdict only; whoever owns the campaign switches the
  creative back on.
- **Rejecting** a creative also switches it off, and approving it later does not switch it back
  on.

So approval gates serving *indirectly, via the active flag* — the ad server reads a banner's
active flag, never its approval status, which is why a rejected banner shows as simply "inactive"
in delivery terms. Which edits count as moderated is a network setting your network administrator chooses under **Admin → Ad
serving → Inventory & campaigns settings → Banner approval moderation fields**: *URL for
local/external banner type*, *Banner Creative for Local/External File Banner Type* and *Code for
HTML code banner type*; with all three off, editing an approved creative never re-queues it. The edit-page header
shows an approval badge only to users who hold one of the moderation permissions, and only for
the states that need attention — **Pending** and **Rejected**; approved and new banners show no
badge. Sites have an analogous network-approval status used by the pending-sites review flow
([Moderation & quality](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/guides/admin/moderation-and-quality.md)).

> **Corner case:** under moderation with deactivation, *editing* a live creative's moderated
> field takes it off air immediately — the save resets it to Pending and deactivates it until
> re-approved. Plan creative swaps around your review latency.

> **Corner case:** only changes to the fields ticked in the network setting above (the
> creative file, its URL or its HTML code) reset approval. Renaming a banner or adjusting its
> weight does not send it back to review.

## What "not serving" looks like from outside

When no banner survives the checklist for a request, the placement returns its default
code on the entry points that carry it (a VAST request gets an empty VAST document with an
`<Error>` node instead, a native request a "no ads" JSON, and an Application placement an empty
response). From the page's point of view that is a normal, successful response — there is no error
to see. That is why diagnosis starts from the
entity pages and reports, not from the browser console:
[Ad not serving](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/troubleshooting/ad-not-serving.md) walks the same checklist as a
decision tree, and [Statuses & indicators](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/reference/statuses-and-indicators.md) lists
every icon and badge the UI uses to flag the states described here.

## Related

- [How ad selection works](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/concepts/how-ad-selection-works.md)
- [Hierarchy and linking](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/concepts/hierarchy-and-linking.md)
- [Statuses and indicators reference](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/reference/statuses-and-indicators.md)
- [Ad not serving — diagnosis](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/troubleshooting/ad-not-serving.md)
- [Moderation and quality](https://epom.com/ad-server/docs/guides/admin/moderation-and-quality.md)