Non-Human traffic (NHT) and Bot Traffic has been an issue for online advertisers as well as platforms that depend on these ads to generate revenue for a long time now. Anyone with stakes in online advertising should take a careful look at where their internet traffic is coming from. It is not just the individual paying for the ads that are losing out, the owner of the website can suffer losses as well. Bot traffic only boost the amount of views on a website, but it will not lead to any conversion for the ads. When advertisers are not making money from the ads, they are more likely to spend less on internet marketing and everyone loses in this situation.
Another issue for online advertising is domain masking or URL masking. This is when another individual copies content from your website while having a similar domain name. Advertisers can be fooled into buying ad spaces on these fake site and it can hurt the reputation of the original site when they are not getting any feedback from the ads. These masked domains generally offer very little engagement or views for the ads. This will hurt your chances of getting advertisers to advertise on your website based on past experiences from phony sites.
Statistic on click fraud:
- 11% of display ads and 25% of video ads are viewed by software and not people.
- 36% of views online is automated and are not viewed by actual people.
- Advertisers can lose up to 7.2 billion dollars globally in 2016.
One solution to non-human traffic or bot traffic is to show the advertiser you have an engaged community on your website. It is important to have interaction between users on your website to show that people are coming into the website on a daily basis. Non-human traffic will cause your website to have a low interaction with the ad for the size of your community. The low response rate will create a poor reputation for advertising on your website and will lead to less money coming in. Another option is to block traffic from these malicious IPs to stop the inflation of views on your website.
Every dollar that goes into phony traffic or online advertising fraud is a dollar that could be going to you. You have to constantly monitor the type of traffic coming into your website and ensure that there are no URL masking going on with your website. It does not take a lot of time or effort to login and check what type of traffic is coming into your website. By doing so, it will allow the advertisers to buy targeted ads to a specific audience with the guaranteed that they are getting the best for their money.
Companies have sprouted up to combat ad fraud:
news.toughdomains.com 