Invalid traffic & fraud · also called Bots, non-human traffic
Bot traffic
Bot traffic is visits, ad impressions or clicks generated by automated software rather than people, ranging from honest search crawlers to fraudulent bots built to look human.
A bot is just a program that uses the web automatically. Some are useful and open about it, such as search engines, price checkers and uptime monitors. Others exist to fake an audience: they load pages, trigger ads, scroll, click and even fill forms so that someone can bill advertisers.
In MRC terms, declared bots are GIVT: they identify themselves in their user agent, appear on the IAB/ABC Spiders & Bots List or come from data-center IPs. Bots that disguise themselves are SIVT. They often run in headless browsers, route through residential proxies to borrow home IP addresses, rotate device fingerprints, and replay recorded human mouse movements.
Detection looks for things humans rarely do: perfectly regular timing, impossible device combinations, browser automation traits, sessions that never vary, or traffic that spikes at 3 a.m. local time. Increasingly, AI agents and LLM crawlers also browse the web; they may be legitimate, but an ad shown only to an agent is still not an ad seen by a person.
Think of it like this
Bot traffic is like a restaurant counting mannequins in the window as diners: some were put there openly for display, others were dressed up to fool the landlord into thinking the place is busy.
An example
A publisher sees a 30% jump in page views overnight, almost all with identical screen sizes, zero scroll variance and sessions lasting exactly 12 seconds. Investigation traces them to a bot network hired by a traffic vendor.
Related terms
Botnet
A botnet is a network of computers, phones or smart devices infected with malware and remotely controlled by criminals, often used to generate fake ad impressions and clicks from real consumer devices.
Headless browser
A headless browser is a web browser that runs without a visible window, controlled by code; widely used for testing and scraping, and by bots to fake human visits and ad views.
GIVT (general invalid traffic)
GIVT (general invalid traffic) is invalid traffic that can be identified with routine, list-based or parameter-based filtration, such as known crawlers, data-center traffic and non-browser user agents.
SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic)
SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic) is invalid traffic designed to look human or legitimate, which can only be found through advanced analytics, multi-point corroboration and often human review.
IAB/ABC Spiders & Bots List
The IAB/ABC International Spiders & Bots List is an industry-maintained list of known crawler and bot user agents, plus valid browser patterns, used to filter general invalid traffic from ad measurement.
Behavioral analysis
Behavioral analysis in fraud detection is examining how a visitor interacts, such as mouse movements, taps, scrolling, typing rhythm and session timing, to tell real humans from bots and scripted activity.
Sources: MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines Addendum (2020 update), IAB Tech Lab / ABC International Spiders & Bots List