Detect invalid traffic should understand how to detect invalid traffic, as it hurts monetization efforts, clouds analytics metrics, and diminishes the value of their ad inventory. Invalid traffic can also hurt publishers’ reputation and lead to being suspended by Google or other advertising partners. This article examines what invalid traffic is, the different types of ad fraud that are prevalent today, and some best practices for fighting back against it.

Navigating the Digital Landscape: Strategies to Detect and Combat Invalid Traffic

Invalid traffic (IVT) is any traffic that is not a real user with a genuine interest in your content, services, or products. It can include anything from harmless bots like search engine crawlers to malicious ones used for ad fraud. The majority of IVT comes from bad actors who use various tactics to steal advertiser’s money and devalue publisher’s ad space. These tactics can include ad fraud, ad stacking, domain spoofing, and more.

General Invalid Traffic

A good way to spot signs of IVT is to look at your website’s bounce rate and session duration. A high bounce rate typically means that visitors are leaving without visiting any other pages, which could indicate a significant portion of your traffic is comprised of bots. In addition, if your session duration is very short, it may be a sign of IVT. The session duration is usually measured by the amount of time users spend on a page. A low session duration can be a sign of fraud, as it is likely that a user is only visiting your site to click on ads.