Invalid traffic & ad fraud quiz
What counts as invalid traffic, how bots pass as humans, how spoofing works and how fraud gets caught. Ten questions to sharpen your instincts for protecting ad spend. intermediate · 10 questions
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A search engine crawler loads a page and triggers an ad call. Is that invalid traffic?
All questions with answers
- A search engine crawler loads a page and triggers an ad call. Is that invalid traffic?
Answer: Yes, it is general invalid traffic (GIVT), even though it is not fraud. Invalid traffic is any traffic that is not a real human with genuine interest, whether malicious or not. Known crawlers are classic GIVT: easy to identify and filter, and not fraud, so 'not malicious' does not mean 'valid'. - Which of these is most likely classed as sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT)?
Answer: A bot routed through residential proxies that mimics mouse movements and scrolls. SIVT is traffic built to evade simple checks and needs advanced analysis to catch. The other three are textbook GIVT, caught with lists such as the IAB/ABC Spiders & Bots List and data-center IP lists. - Why do fraudsters pay for residential proxies?
Answer: So bot traffic appears to come from ordinary home internet connections instead of data centers. Filters routinely flag data center traffic. A residential proxy routes bots through real household IPs, often from infected devices, so IP reputation alone looks clean and detection must lean on behavioral analysis. - A bid request says the impression is on a famous news site, but the ad actually renders on an obscure low-quality site. What is this?
Answer: Domain spoofing. Domain spoofing lies about where the ad will run so cheap inventory can be sold at premium prices. ads.txt and sellers.json exist largely to expose it. - Why is connected TV (CTV) especially attractive to fraudsters?
Answer: CPMs are high and many ad requests come server-to-server, where device details are hard to verify. CTV inventory sells at premium prices, and with SSAI the request often comes from a server rather than the TV. That makes SSAI spoofing possible: fake servers claiming to relay millions of TVs. - Are made-for-advertising (MFA) sites always invalid traffic?
Answer: No, the visitors may be real humans; MFA is a quality and value problem, though it often overlaps with IVT. Made-for-advertising sites buy cheap clicks and pack pages with ads to profit on the spread, a form of traffic arbitrage. Visitors can be human, so the IVT rate may look fine even when the media is nearly worthless. - What is the key difference between pre-bid filtering and post-bid measurement?
Answer: Pre-bid avoids bidding on suspicious impressions; post-bid measures what was bought, supporting reports and refunds. Pre-bid filtering prevents the spend in the first place, while post-bid measurement finds what slipped through, so you can claim a refunds and clawbacks. Good programmes use both. - What is ads.txt for?
Answer: Letting a publisher publicly list which companies are authorised to sell its inventory. ads.txt is a public file on the publisher's domain naming authorised sellers and account IDs, so buyers can reject unauthorised resellers. It does not encrypt anything; signing requests is what ads.cert was designed for. - After a campaign ends, your verification vendor reports 18% SIVT. What is the best next step?
Answer: Request refunds for the invalid impressions, cut the offending supply paths and tighten pre-bid filters. Post-bid findings are your evidence for a refunds and clawbacks and for pruning bad paths via supply path optimization. Spending more buys more of the same bad traffic. - An impression is counted as served, but the ad was loaded into a 1×1-pixel frame no human could see. What is this called?
Answer: Pixel stuffing. Pixel stuffing crams a full ad into a tiny frame to rack up impressions. Ad stacking is its cousin, layering ads on top of each other so only the top one is visible.