Ep 5: Invalid traffic: GIVT vs SIVT

Myth. Invalid traffic always means somebody is committing fraud.

Invalid traffic, or IVT, is any ad activity that isn’t genuine human interest.

The Media Rating Council splits it in two. Follow four visits to news.example. A search crawler that announces itself, and a request from a data centre server. Both are GIVT, general invalid traffic, caught routinely with lists. Normal, filtered, usually not your fault. Next, a hijacked phone loading pages in the background, and an ad hidden underneath another ad. Those are SIVT, sophisticated invalid traffic, found only with advanced analysis. That’s what drives deductions and account reviews, and sometimes the cause is on your side. Bought traffic can carry bots. Stacked or hidden slots count. So does clicking your own ads.

This week, list your paid traffic sources, and check no ad slot is hidden or overlapped.

Next, how not to be mistaken for an MFA site.