As the digital advertising industry matures, it has reintroduced fundamental
As the digital advertising industry matures, it has reintroduced fundamental questions of transparency and integrity. Here we take a look at ad fraud and non-human traffic: what it is and which measures should be considered to counter it.
In digital advertising, non-human traffic, invalid traffic, or bot traffic is referred to as website activity performed by a software application rather than a real person browsing online. As mentioned, bots (or “spiders”) are applications that are used to run various repetitive tasks online.
Bots aren’t bad per sé – they are widely used in various ways that make our lives easier. For example, search engines use bots and spiders to map website content.
Bots are able to perform repetitive tasks at scale that are impossible for humans. This has created a challenge for the ad industry: some companies and individuals discovered that they can drive fraudulent ad revenue by mimicking human traffic for their own benefit. In 2016, ANA estimated that the staggering cost of ad fraud in 2016 was $7.2 billion.
Sometimes, non-human traffic is the unwelcome side-effect of purchasing traffic. According to a recent study, 77% of publishers are victims of non-human traffic, while only 38% reported that they purchased traffic.
Many publishers also fall victim to unintended fraud when bots travel through their sites just to make their cookies look better, ie. as if they were human.
As the numbers show, it isn’t realistic to expect 100% human delivery on digital advertising today. Publishers can tap into various means to minimize the impact of non-human traffic:
The Kiosked innovation team has various tools to help our publishers weed out malicious advertising – contact us to learn more.