The Rise of Invalid Traffic in Digital Advertising

Neil Andrew

January 24, 2024

Digital ad spend is set to accelerate in 2024. In fact, Dentsu forecasts global ad spend to grow 4.6% this year, reaching $752.8 billion.

When we look at the proliferation of social media platforms and the rising influence of search engines on consumer behaviour, this acceleration comes as no surprise. Digital channels are fast becoming the dominant way for brands to engage with their target audiences and drive traffic to their websites. Simultaneously, these channels offer marketers the ability to gather valuable data to improve future campaigns.

However, as more marketers invest in digital channels, there’s one challenge they must overcome to ensure these increased budgets are being used effectively: invalid traffic. This refers to any website visits that don’t come from a real person with genuine interest – from bots to automated scripts and fake clicks. And the problem with invalid traffic is that it instantly wastes ad spend budget as those ‘visitors’ will never convert.

In fact, Lunio’s latest Wasted Ad Spend report reveals advertisers are set to waste over $71bn on traffic generated by invalid activity in 2024, an increase of 33% from 2022.

Increased invalid traffic levels

Invalid traffic has been around for a considerable amount of time in the digital landscape. However, advancements in automation and AI have meant that bot activity – one of the most common forms of invalid traffic – is becoming more prevalent and sophisticated. Imperva’s 2023 Bad Bot report found that nearly half (47.4%) of all internet traffic came from bots, a 5.1% increase over the previous year.

In addition, our research found that 8.5% of all paid traffic across major marketing channels – including Google, Meta, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok – is invalid, equating to roughly one in every 12 website visits.

Yet, it’s not just the number of bots that are rising. It’s their level of sophistication. Developments in AI and ML are enabling bots to mimic human behaviour in more advanced ways, effectively evading traditional detection methods.

With advancements in AI set to accelerate over the next year, raising awareness of invalid traffic is vital. As an industry, we must lift the lid on what invalid traffic is, how it operates, and the impact it has. Otherwise, it will continue to advance at the expense of marketers globally.

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The wider business impact

One of the main issues with invalid traffic is that it poses a challenge beyond marketing teams – it can also impact the wider business.

Once a bot or fake click fills in a form, it impacts CRMs, distorting analytics and wasting the business’ time following leads that will never convert. It can also lead to inaccurate budget allocations and unpredictable projected revenue forecasts.

The financial costs continue to stack up when you consider lost revenue opportunities i.e. if the money spent on invalid traffic converted at the same rate as valid traffic. Our research reveals invalid traffic will potentially cost businesses a staggering $204.8bn (£168.6bn) in lost revenue opportunity in 2024.

As such, it’s crucial that the entire marketing community starts building a healthier digital advertising ecosystem in which every click, impression and placement drives genuine value for brands and consumers alike.

Maximising ad spend efficiency

The first step to stop the rise of invalid traffic is to detect it. It’s vital marketers gain greater visibility over their website traffic to start distinguishing between invalid and genuine traffic. It’s only by understanding their website traffic that marketers can then mitigate against invalid traffic wasting ad spend budget.

One way to help identify invalid traffic is monitoring bounce rate. The average bounce rate for a PPC landing page is around 50-70%, and if a landing page is experiencing a rate higher than 70%, it might signify a bot problem, as bots don’t tend to browse additional webpages.

Another key method is to look for unusually low session or dwell time, as this can indicate an influx of bots. For most PPC landing pages, an average time spent on-page between 35 seconds and 2.5 minutes is considered ideal. If it’s far below the 30 second mark, this can indicate a high volume of invalid ad clicks across campaigns.

However, manually tracking these metrics takes time and doesn’t always unlock the level of insight marketers need to stop invalid traffic in its tracks. By leveraging the latest advancements in AI and ML, this process doesn’t need to be overwhelming or laborious. Through using machine learning to analyse all paid traffic, algorithms can capture data from ad platforms and assess the validity of each click.

So ironically, automation can also play a pivotal role in the fall of invalid traffic, not only helping marketers streamline their operations, but also leading to more efficient utilisation of marketing budgets across paid media campaigns.

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