Understanding General and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic in Digital Advertising
Learn how invalid traffic, bots, and ad fraud affect digital campaigns, and how advertisers can identify suspicious activity and protect their budgets.
Invalid traffic is any visit or view that isn't from a genuine human, including both bots and accidental clicks. It comes in two types: General Invalid Traffic (GIVT), which is mostly harmless automated activity, and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT), which is engineered fraud designed to look human. Invalid traffic costs money through wasted spend and corrupts analytics, teaching automated systems to follow false patterns.
It's hard to catch because it mimics real human behavior. In 2023, about 22% of online ad spend, roughly $84 billion, was lost to invalid traffic, projected to exceed $170 billion in five years. The biggest risk comes from SIVT, which includes bots mimicking humans, click farms, domain spoofing, and ad stacking. Publishers can also suffer from invalid traffic on their sites, which doesn't generate real earnings and can jeopardize payouts.
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