It’s obvious that as a marketer, you do not want to see any bot traffic.
The same applies to every brand, and obviously, every performance marketing solution provider.
Fortunately, there are ways to navigate through the ad tech and filter out this unwanted traffic. Read on to discover them!
What is bot traffic in performance marketing?
Falling into the trap of buying artificial traffic that’s really worthless for any marketing ventures has become a real threat in the digital advertising industry. In order to protect your credibility, funds, and time, you’ll need to learn how to filter bot traffic out and how to cooperate with your ad exchange platform to provide maximum safety for your campaigns.
The scale of bot clicks
Unsurprisingly, bot traffic is taking up a consistently bigger portion of the overall Internet. In 2021, according to Statista reports, traffic bots were responsible for more than 40% of it. And if we have a quick look at the historical stats, it appears that organic, human visits share has been decreasing, and bad clicks have become more and more active.
With this rather unfavorable state, this needs to be a high-rank issue addressed from the very first steps of setting up the campaigns. Traffic-hurt analytics data will not be helpful, and the campaigns will simply underperform, wearying your budgets. Therefore, special care is required to stop abusive clicks – choosing the right sources within your ad exchange is the first of many steps.
Why are bots bad for your advertising
As a performance marketer or an advertiser in general, you will want to reach an engaged audience that converts easily, so that your ROI is as high as possible. Reaching the targets and providing a successful campaign will be not only difficult but even impossible if you invest mostly in bot users.
Had it not been detected, unauthorized bot traffic would in fact, only inflate your campaign’s stats without any positive influence on it. If bought, you’ll still have to pay for each click, but there is no chance for a real-life conversion. Quality solution providers will firstly detect malicious clicks before they are sent to your campaign, and secondly, make sure you are remunerated whenever you rightfully report any suspicion of malicious bots.
Types of bad traffic
It’s important to remember that although bots usually fall into one cognitive category, traffic fraud is not exactly homogenous. Among many types of bots that can be encountered, the most popular ones are:
❌ spam,
❌ fake clicks,
❌ ad frauds,
❌ credit card fraud,
❌ and some hybrids (as bad as it sounds).
How bots affect your campaigns
Although nonhuman visits are fake, a big part of it was made to follow real-life human behavior patterns. These are used for many reasons, but their main role will be inflating statistics, data mining, and wasting resources.
Marketers will find click bots most damaging to their everyday endeavors. What we called ‘stat inflation‘ before is, in reality, a case where an ad is being interacted with by a bot, thus making the advertiser pay for this traffic, but without any possible further actionable operation. If unfiltered, you are not only charged for the clicks but most usually the average bid price for it is elevated as well. In summary, you’ll pay more, and get worse results.
Ad fraud could take different forms and the best practice is to stay up to date with the news. See Voluum tracker’s overview of it to better understand how both publishers and advertisers are currently affected by fraudulent activity.
Are there good bots?
But fear not, as not every bot thou encounter, shall pose danger to your campaign.
The noun ‘bot‘ does not necessarily refer to malicious frauds, but rather to the whole spectrum of automated solutions. Good bots are widely used by search engines, and their main purpose is to ensure better control and verification of websites within the offered feed.
Search engine crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot are employed by the biggest brands to keep eye on content offered to the users, get rid of violations, and generally monitor the situation. Web crawlers enable safe browsing for users and a safer advertising environment for brands and marketers.
This means that good search engine bots help advertisers with not only finding contextually-relevant sources, which are super helpful for every marketer within the search marketplace advertising. By guarding copyrighted materials and content, good bots are yet another tool that helps maintain user and brand safety.
Remember that if you are using trackers in your campaigns, good bots should not hurt analytics data. Best trackers allow them in but do not count their visits as human ones.
Zeropark traffic cleanups and what they brought
Although it’s the everyday responsibility of every prominent ad network to combat fake clicks, it may happen that over time some sources become untrustworthy. That is why Zeropark has already conducted two major source cleanups with the sole purpose of ensuring that no malicious traffic is being allowed in. Ripping the band-aid outright bore the promised fruit.
The grand 2017 cleanup
The first cleanup was conducted in 2017, and over an intense 5-months period, more than 75% of the total volume offered at that time, was being cut off (or cleaned up, if we prefer). Paradoxically, but not really surprisingly, this revolution not only made Zeropark a healthier platform but also boosted the average CPM rate from $0,60 to even $1. Read on to discover why this is an indicator of a change for the better.
If you wish to learn more about how the first grand cleanup was conducted, and what were the results, we encourage you to see our dedicated article about it.
The 2020 cleanup
The scope of the second Zeropark cleanup was not as broad, as only over a third of the inventory has been erased, but it brought great success as well. Cleaning up push offers from malicious bot traffic and underperforming sources actually lowered CPC prices within Zeropark, and doubled the ROI for advertisers.
Below you can see some takeaways from the 2020 Zeropark cleanup, but if you are interested in a more in-detail analysis of it, please feel invited to our article about it.
Content Quality endeavors
As we already signalized, there ought to be nobody out there you should trust more with your performance than the dedicated Compliance Team and campaign managers provided by the ad exchange platform.
With the help of professionals, advertisers are not only offered assistance when it comes to optimization and setting up campaigns, but also some additional manual check-ups, and access to trusted, hand-picked, and regularly verified sources.
Some brands, like Zeropark for instance, have developed their own, internal bot filtering procedures. That way, our experts are fully capable of determining what should, and should not, be perceived as bot traffic. In that case, implementing additional protection measures provides safety for all sides of the process.
Every Zeropark advertiser and publisher, without exceptions, is bound to Compliance & Policy Guidelines. This is to ensure the increased safety and convenience of both supply and demand-side partners of the marketing platform.
On top of that, dedicated Zeropark campaign performance teams conduct their manual check-ups and filter out suspicious traffic on a daily basis. Custom tools and solutions offered by Zeropark Team help advertisers make sure that they are targeting highly-converting audiences only.
How do you report suspicious traffic?
If you are already a Zeropark partner and suspect that your ads may be affected by bots, reach out to your Onboarding or Account Manager. Inform them of your worries about the traffic you buy, and allow the specialists to investigate the case.
Remember at all times that your advertising might not set off and bring impressive ROIs right away. Fluctuations occur organically, and in most cases, mean that optimization efforts are needed to put the campaign on the right track.
Discover how to optimize your campaigns with the Zeropark webinar.
Brand safety
Brands will and should benefit only from these advertising solutions that offer them access to trusted audiences. Non-human traffic is something no marketer will want to invest in, and that is why finding the best fitting and the most secure marketing platform is key to enhancing the effectiveness and boosting ROIs.
Read Zeropark’s article about the latest Trends in Programmatic Advertising, covering the topic of brand safety.
Higher CPM means higher ROI
Let’s come back to the increased CPM matter that was aforementioned. Why do we, and you should, too, consider it a good sign?
Naturally, every marketer would want to pay as little as possible for the traffic they buy. Minimizing costs while maximizing returns is the principle of business, and that is no secret. But with traffic purchases, drops in the CPM price (Cost Per Mille), will most probably mean one of these:
❌ low competition for the sources;
❌ low quality of the clicks;
❌ bot infestation.
Legitimate traffic sources will be more expensive, as they hold the promise of increased ROI and attract more competitors. Bear in mind that you may need to regularly reconsider your bids. Make sure you are winning the best and most secure sources.
Bots in ad arbitrage
With general marketing endeavors, neglecting traffic bots can cause financial losses. But for arbitrageurs, sending these to Google, Yahoo, or Bing feed, can pose some further complications.
Providing these giants with non-compliant traffic and contents could potentially lead to losing access to feed, therefore blocking any arbitrage endeavors for the entity. This is exactly the reason why arbitrageurs need to make sure their campaigns are safe and of good quality.
You can see Zeropark’s article about Compliance in Ad Arbitrage where we covered how important it is for all arbitrageurs to get engaged with trusted offers only, and how a dexterous Compliance Team can become an asset on your journey.
Summary: Anti-ad fraud solutions
Let us summarize what is recommended for every performance marketer who wants to cut the bots down. Do the following to work on relevance, and brand safety, as well as boost the ROIs:
✅ Track your campaigns for more insightful data and metrics;
✅ Cooperate with your ad exchange campaign managers;
✅ Provide detailed feedback to your Onboarding or Account Manager;
✅ Create whitelists and blacklists of sources;
✅ Control IPs in your traffic;
✅ Use Rule-Based Optimization;
✅ Trust your performance advertising platform’s compliance rules.
Traffic quality should be fundamental to your advertising.
See how the Zeropark performance marketing platform can help you achieve it.
