The digital advertising space loves its acronyms! Here’s one you should know intimately: IVT.
Stands for invalid traffic, although we often refer to it as fraud. It’s a costly challenge. According to the 2024 Wasted Ad Spend Report, some $12.35 billion was wasted on Google Ads due to IVT in 2022, and $16.59 billion will be wasted in 2024. Outside of Google, $42.28 billion was wasted due to IVT in 2022, and $54.87 billion will be wasted this year.
But the wasted budget tells only part of the loss. When ads are seen by real people, your business grows. If ads are seen by bots or fraudsters, they will not help you build your sales funnel.
In addition to wasted budget, your brand loses the opportunity to build its customer base -- and all the revenue they bring to your bottom line -- when campaign traffic is IVT.
Now is a good time to ask yourself some key questions:
- What is IVT?
- Is it possible to avoid IVT
- How can I ensure my campaigns don’t have a lot of IVT in them?
Let’s get into it.
What is IVT?
As stated earlier, IVT stands for invalid traffic, which the MRC defines as “traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts.”
Not all bot traffic is inherently nefarious. We need bots to spider the web so that users can find the information they need. But even if bot traffic is legitimate, we don’t want to show it ads, because it’s not a customer who can convert.
According to the MRC, there are two kinds of IVT: GVIT and SIVT. Here’s how the commission defines each:
General Invalid Traffic (GIVT): Includes traffic identified through routine and list-based means of filtration -- such as bots, spiders, other crawlers; non-browser user agent headers; and pre-fetch or browser pre-rendered traffic.
Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT): Includes traffic identified through advanced analytics, multipoint corroboration, human intervention -- such as hijacked devices, ad tags, or creative; adware; malware; misappropriated content.
The “unfiltered” internet is filled with IVT, the exact amount of which is likely unknowable. What we do know, however, is that there are multiple layers in the digital ad tech stack that work on filtering IVT out of digital ad campaigns.
Is it Possible to Avoid IVT?
The short answer is yes. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) measures IVT levels in campaigns that use TAG Certified Against Fraud vs. those that don’t. Across the globe, and across multiple years, TAG has found that campaigns that run through TAG Certified Channel consistently see less than 1% IVT.
A TAG Certified Channel is when all parties in a transaction -- buyer, seller, ad exchange, DSP -- are TAG Certified. (E-Planning is TAG certified).
But 1% IVT isn’t the same as 0% IVT, and we must keep in mind that the fraudsters are well capitalized and technically astute. They are constantly inventing and deploying new tactics, and it takes the industry a minute to identify and mitigate them.
There are multiple tactics for identifying and mitigating IVT:
- Pre-bid filtering. This is a process of screening and eliminating invalid or non-targeted ad impressions before an ad auction takes place to ensure higher quality and relevant ad placements
- Post-bid analysis, which is an evaluation of ad impressions and user interactions after the ad auction to identify and mitigate invalid traffic, fraud, and ensure campaign effectiveness
- Deploying sophisticated bot detection algorithms
- Implementing fraud detection technologies
- Regularly updating exclusion lists of known fraudulent IP addresses
- Partnering with a third-party verification service, such as DoubleVerify or IAS
- Device fingerprinting
- Analyzing user behavior patterns to see if it reflects legitimate behavior patterns
- Setting up honeypots to trap and identify malicious traffic
How to Ensure Your Campaign is IVT Free
The first step is to partner with companies that take IVT identification and mitigation seriously. Any company that’s serious about ensuring your budget is spent on actual inventory that is seen by a real human will take the time to achieve certification with an organization like TAG.
Check industry sources like Pixalate, which is a fraud intelligence and marketing compliance platform that provides ad fraud detection, prevention, and brand safety solutions for digital advertising. Pixalate monitors inventory quality of all the players in the industry, and ranks them.
Be willing to pay for traffic filtering. Through the years we’ve heard marketers say that paying the tech tax to mitigate invalid traffic is an unnecessary expense, but that isn’t the case. The whole point of advertising is to grow your business, so even if you get a refund or pay very little for invalid traffic, you still lose the opportunity to get in front of new customers and grow your brand.