What is a traffic quality score?
A traffic quality score is a single number that summarizes how likely a source of impressions, clicks or visits is to be real, engaged human traffic. Vendors compute it from many signals, such as invalid-traffic flags, device and network checks, and behavior, so buyers and publishers can compare sites, apps and suppliers quickly instead of reading dozens of metrics.
Traffic quality is broader than an IVT rate. A source can be mostly human yet still be poor: accidental clicks, instant bounces, heavy auto-refresh abuse or made-for-advertising sites layouts. Scores roll these signals into one index so a buyer can set rules such as "only bid on supply above X".
Each vendor builds its score differently, which means scores from different providers are not directly comparable. For example, ClearTrust publishes a TQI Score™ that it says is derived from more than 150 filters. When using any score, ask what it measures, how often it updates, whether it is accredited, and how it maps to measurable outcomes such as conversions.