Frequently Asked Questions on Invalid Clicks and Traffic
What is IVT?
Invalid traffic (IVT) is a specific type of activity that generates traffic. It commonly originates from robots, malicious users, or other high risk sources.
Some examples of IVT activities include any clicks or impressions that are generated by malicious users, automated bots, and publishers encouraging clicks on their ads. Many technology partners filter out most invalid clicks and impressions and advertisers are not charged for these activities.
Simply put, this traffic type is high in ad fraud or poor quality traffic.
How does Sovrn monitor for IVT?
Sovrn utilizes HUMAN for their services in IVT monitoring. Sovrn also utilizes Google's data & analytics to help track clicks and impressions.
Sovrn will not pay publishers for any IVT traffic, which helps minimize risk for ad fraud and abuse.
How can publishers prevent IVT?
The best way for publishers to prevent invalid traffic is to take an analytic view of the users that are coming to your site(s). Tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Woopra, and other site analytics tools are paramount in looking through this data.
With the help of these tools, publishers can break down traffic reports into many meaningful segments. The following questions can help you break your traffic down:
where are your users located?
what traffic sources are your users coming from?
what is the referring URL for your traffic?
what pages are your users visiting?
how long are users staying on your website?
Publishers should also avoid partnering with low quality parties. Purchasing traffic should only done from reputable partners, and should be done sparingly.
Lastly, publishers should not click on their own ads.