The Programmatic Glossary
A practical glossary designed to help marketers, advertisers and ad-tech professionals understand the terminology that powers programmatic advertising
Fraud & Brand Safety
Invalid Traffic (IVT)
Any ad traffic that does not come from a genuine human viewing the ad in good faith. IVT (Invalid Traffic) includes bot traffic, click farms, automated scripts and accidental clicks. It is a significant source of waste in digital advertising budgets.
HOW IT WORKS
IVT (Invalid Traffic) is detected through pre-bid filtering (blocking suspicious bid requests before the auction) and post-bid measurement (analysing delivered impressions for fraud signals after the fact). Detection tools look for signals like impossible browsing patterns, data centre IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, mismatched device signatures and abnormally high engagement rates.
EXAMPLE
An advertiser runs a campaign and sees a 4% CTR (Click-Through Rate), extremely high for display. An IVT (Invalid Traffic) audit reveals 60% of the traffic came from automated scripts in data centres. The fraudulent impressions are excluded from billing and the supply source is blocked.
RELATED TERMS
Bot Traffic | Ad Fraud | Traffic Scoring | Brand Safety | Domain Laundering
★ LIMELIGHT INSIGHT: Limelight supports custom IVT (Invalid Traffic) vendor integration for pre-bid and post-bid scanning, allowing partners to choose their preferred measurement provider and maintain the highest inventory quality standards.
