Invalid traffic & fraud · also called IVT refunds, clawbacks, chargebacks
Refunds and clawbacks
Refunds and clawbacks are the processes by which advertisers get money back, and publishers lose earnings, for impressions or clicks later identified as invalid traffic or fraud.
Programmatic ads are often paid for before anyone has finished analysing them. When post-campaign checks find invalid traffic, the money has to flow back. A refund is the advertiser being credited; a clawback is the platform recovering the corresponding payment from the seller or publisher.
Platforms handle this differently. Search and social platforms usually filter invalid clicks automatically and credit accounts; Google, for example, says advertisers are not charged for clicks its systems identify as invalid, and makes adjustments when invalid activity is found later. In open programmatic, DSPs and SSPs may refund on the basis of a verification vendor's post-bid measurement, subject to contracts, time windows and thresholds. Publishers then see deductions on their payouts, which is why publishers care about the quality of any sourced traffic they buy.
Refunds are imperfect: vendors disagree on what is invalid, long supply chains make recovery slow, and money paid to fraudsters may never be recovered. That is why buyers prefer pre-bid filtering to avoid invalid impressions in the first place.
Think of it like this
It is like a shop refunding you for a faulty product and then sending the bill back to the supplier who made it.
An example
An advertiser's verification report shows 180,000 SIVT impressions on a $20 CPM campaign. The DSP credits $3,600, and the SSP deducts the same amount from the offending publisher's monthly payout.
Related terms
Post-bid measurement
Post-bid measurement is analysing ads after they have been bought and served, checking for invalid traffic, viewability and brand safety in the real environment, to report quality and support refunds.
Invalid click
An invalid click is an ad click that is not the result of genuine user interest, such as bot clicks, accidental double-clicks, clicks by publishers on their own ads, or manipulated clicks.
Discrepancy
A discrepancy is the difference between numbers reported by two systems for the same campaign, such as a publisher's and an advertiser's ad server counting different impressions or clicks.
Invalid traffic (IVT)
Invalid traffic (IVT) is any impression, click or visit not coming from a real person with a genuine chance to see the ad, whether caused by bots, fraud or error.
Pre-bid filtering
Pre-bid filtering is checking each ad opportunity for invalid traffic, fraud or brand-safety risk before a buyer bids on it, so bad impressions are avoided rather than refunded later.
Sources: Google Ads Help: Invalid clicks, definition, MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines Addendum (2020 update)