The one-hour link audit

No tools beyond a phone and your ad account. Most accounts turn up something in the first twenty minutes.

6 August 2026 · PAD team

1. The phone test, ten minutes

Post your store link to a story visible only to you. Tap it from inside Instagram on a real iPhone. Repeat from a Facebook post. Watch for three seconds without touching anything.

Healthy: the App Store opens. Broken: a white page that never resolves.

2. Objective comparison, ten minutes

Pull click to install for an app install campaign and a traffic campaign on the same app. Similar numbers are healthy. Traffic dramatically worse means the browser, not the creative.

3. Platform split, five minutes

Compare iOS and Android install rates for the same creative. Android much better is the signature of this problem, because Android browsers can hand off to the store and iOS ones cannot.

4. Redirect chain, ten minutes

Follow your link with a request and count the hops. Anything past two deserves scrutiny, and every hop is a chance to lose campaign parameters:

curl -sIL -A 'iPhone' 'https://your-link' | grep -i '^location'

5. Parameters at the destination, ten minutes

Confirm ct and pt are still attached at the final App Store URL, and referrer at the Play URL. Check App Store Connect the next day rather than trusting the setup.

6. The placements you forgot, fifteen minutes

Bio links on every platform, email templates including automated sequences, support macros, creator placements, printed QR codes. These accumulate for years and nobody re-tests them.

What to do with the findings

Fix the highest-traffic placement first, watch arrival rate for a week, then do the rest. The migration order is covered in the migration write-up.