Let’s face it: no one wants to pay for invalid traffic. Especially a growing business looking to get the most bang for their buck and convert leads.
Invalid traffic, or IVT, is a major issue in the digital world, with small businesses in the United States discovering that more than one out of every ten clicks on their paid advertising campaigns are the result of IVT.
Any clicks or impressions generated by bots, automated scripts, fraudulent activity, or even human error are included in IVT. If you pay for Google Ads or another type of online advertising, you may be paying for invalid traffic without even realizing it.
What Exactly Is Invalid Traffic?
Invalid traffic (IVT) is non-human traffic generated by automated scripts or malicious software with no intention of interacting with the ad itself. This type of fraud can originate from a variety of sources, including infected computers, botnets, and legitimate websites that have been compromised.
Invalid traffic can also include accidental clicks, ad injection, botnets, clickjacking, malware, pop-under ads, and misrepresentation of in-stream and out-of-stream video.
What Invalid Traffic Costs You
At first glance, IVT appears to be a good thing; after all, more traffic means your website is more likely to appear in search results; however, IVT is harmful, particularly to small businesses.
Invalid traffic can be especially costly for B2B businesses, as it can quickly deplete your ad budget while providing no value. Aside from the direct costs, it can also skew web analytics data, making an accurate assessment of your website’s performance difficult.
If your website receives a high
volume of invalid traffic, Google and other search engines may flag it as suspicious, resulting in lower search rankings and a decrease in organic traffic. It can eventually result in lower quality scores on Google Ads and even getting your website banned from an advertising network.
Businesses that use Google Ads get a 200% ROI on their pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, making it a great option for B2B businesses to target businesses based on their size, industry, and even location. However, if your B2B website receives a high volume of invalid traffic, Google may classify it as click fraud and penalize the site accordingly.
While Google and other ad exchanges provide tools to assist you in identifying invalid traffic, they can be difficult to use and may not catch all instances of fraud. The best way to combat invalid traffic is to be proactive and put measures in place to prevent it from happening in the first place.
How Can You Avoid Paying For Invalid Traffic?
1. Use A Reputable Ad Network
Many new and even established businesses make the mistake of falling for scam ad networks simply because they are less expensive overall. These ad networks frequently do not work or charge far too much for almost nothing.
Before committing to a single ad network, do your research because each one will offer different features that may or may not align with what you require from a network.
The best ad networks can filter out a large portion of the invalid traffic you’re seeing, so do your homework. Some ad networks will even give you a refund if they are unable to deliver the promised human traffic.
To get you started, here are some of the most trustworthy ad networks available today:
- Google Ads – Using bot detection algorithms, Google Ads will filter out invalid traffic, and you will only be charged when customers click on your ads.
- Adsterra – Adsterra offers a three-tiered security check that includes an algorithm, a third-party fraud detection program, and a dependable human check. You can also choose how and when you pay (by click, by conversions, or by views).
- Outbrain – Outbrain allows you to target potential buyers in a variety of ways and curate who sees your ads. Pricing information is available upon request.
- Infolinks – Infolinks provides you with smart ads that seamlessly integrate themselves into your content in any way you choose. Pricing can be obtained upon request.
- Mediavine – Mediavine allows you to choose from a variety of templates to help you streamline your content creation while also handling the coding for you once your ad campaign is ready to go. Pricing can also be obtained upon request.
2. Use An Advertising Platform That Verifies Traffic
As mentioned in the previous section, some advertising platforms may verify incoming traffic to ensure that they are showing your ads to real people. It is critical to consider this when determining which platform or network will be the best fit for your needs.
After all, if your ad network can validate traffic before serving the ad, it eliminates a lot of the guesswork. You can be certain that you are not wasting money on invalid traffic by using traffic verification.
Some ad platforms that use verification technology are listed below:
- Ezoic – Ezoic is a monetization platform that assists you in locating verified ad programs to use on your website, including programs that can filter out or recognize invalid traffic.
- Media.net – Media.net is one of the world’s largest ad technology companies, providing services such as ROI and revenue optimization, traffic quality and compliance management, client control, and data protection.
- Monumetric– Monumetric is an advertising platform that allows you to track the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and content. Monumetric gives you complete control over the content of your ads as well as the clients to whom you will be advertising.
- AdThrive – AdThrive is a platform that helps you optimize your RPM (ad revenue per thousand impressions) through specialized ads and verification technology that removes invalid traffic from RPM calculations.
- Taboola – Taboola is a platform that will assist you in creating ad content that will target your ideal client using Taboola’s user behavior data, which is used to help you filter out invalid traffic.
3. Use A Traffic Monitoring Service
If you’re concerned that your ad network’s AI isn’t strong enough to weed out the majority of your invalid traffic, you have other options. You can use a web traffic monitoring service to keep track of the status of your valid versus invalid traffic statistics.
These services monitor your incoming traffic and estimate how much of it was valid based on the information gathered from each visitor. With a better understanding of how much traffic you are receiving, you can adjust the amount you pay for your ads accordingly.
Some of the best traffic monitoring services can help you track your overall traffic:
- AppDynamics – AppDynamics enables you to monitor every aspect of your business and website, including infrastructure, app performance, database, business performance, and general user monitoring. All of this information can assist you in determining how much of your traffic was legitimate and how much was not.
- New Relic Browser – New Relic allows you to track which browsers your visitors are using, which can help you determine which traffic is coming from your infrastructure, which is coming from your app (if you have one), and which, if any, is invalid traffic from bots or faulty browsers.
- SmartBear AlertSite – SmartBear is a monitoring platform that provides an advanced enough early warning system to sort through invalid and valid user traffic, reducing false warnings that other monitoring systems can flood their users with.
- Dynatrace UEM – Dynatrace is a comprehensive monitoring platform that allows you to monitor all aspects of your website and applications, including user data, security, business analytics, and cloud automation.
- LogicMonitor – LogicMonitor is a cloud-based monitoring platform that monitors your traffic to assist you in filtering out invalid traffic while remaining completely automated, making it cost effective and simple to use.
4. Hire A Marketing Agency
The most surefire way to avoid overpaying for invalid traffic is to hire someone who will monitor those statistics and make those decisions for you. Working with an outsourced marketing agency is the best way to ensure that your money is being spent on advertising to actual people.
Not only do marketing firms help you plan and design your ad campaigns, but they can also help with website development, social media, and finding the best ad platforms for your business.
Here at Pollock Marketing Group, we can handle every part of your business marketing needs. From conception to the final product, we will handle all of your content production and find you the best ad platforms for your marketing campaigns.