Detecting Invalid Traffic is one of the key elements in the fight against fraud and saving advertising budgets from spending on worthless traffic.
According to the website Statista.com in 2020, advertising scams caused economic losses of $ 35 billion worldwide. The size of the global digital advertising market has been estimated at $ 333 billion, which would mean ad fraud accounts for about 10 percent of total digital ad spend.
What is Invalid Traffic(IVT)?
Invalid Traffic is a technical term for ad impressions generated by bots or automated scripts to generate clicks. IVT is often confused with advertising scams, but not all invalid traffic is malicious. Invalid traffic may include accidental clicks on an ad, caused by an invasive form of ad serving. Even so, detecting all forms of IVT is essential to protect your spending and ensure that impressions are correct and viewable.
Invalid traffic may include:
- Clicks or impressions generated by publishers who click their own active ads
- Repetitive clicks or ad impressions generated by one or more users
- Ad implementations that may cause a large number of accidental clicks
- Publishers that encourage clicking on their ads
- Automated scripts to trigger clicks
Types of invalid traffic
Media Rating Council has listed two main types of invalid traffic:
General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) – Traffic generated by bots, the so-called non-human traffic. GIVT can be identified by routine filtering methods using lists or standard parameter checks. However, if not monitored and properly accounted for, they can affect web analytics and distort the assessment of the impact of individual marketing channels.
Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) – It is much more difficult to detect traffic as it requires advanced analytics to track the irregularities. The patterns of action are changing frequently here, so it is a continuous work to ensure security.
We can extract SIVT methods such as:
- AdWare
- Malware
- Cookie Stuffing
- Proxy masking
- Domain masking
- User Geo change
How to avoid losing budgets on ad fraud?
Detecting Invalid Traffic affects companies in every industry that operate on the Internet. At PragmaticBOX, in order to automate the detection of traffic irregularities in real time, we use our proprietary algorithms in the Fraud Prevention, which allow you to make savings in advertising budgets. Invalid Traffic only builds a false impression of the quality or volume of the traffic it receives. However, it should be remembered that the incorrect analytics of invalid traffic is directly linked to the erroneous investment in promotion in the other channels.
