A common challenge for advertising platforms and their customers is filtering automated internet activity that mimics human interaction with ads and landing pages. Activity that does not represent real user engagement with your online assets is known as invalid traffic (IVT).
If campaign reporting tools do not remove significant amounts of IVT from metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), pageviews, and bounce rate, campaign results may be distorted. For example, if IVT generates a large number of ad clicks, the Demandbase Advertising Campaigns dashboard may report an inflated CTR that does not reflect actual human engagement.
Demandbase takes extensive measures to filter as much IVT as possible. The most common sources of IVT generally fall into three categories: creative validators, bots, and testing activity.
Creative Validators
Demandbase supply-side partners, ad exchanges, and analytics tools such as Google Analytics use creative validators to crawl ads and check creatives for malicious or incorrect code.
When an Advertising campaign launches, supply partners scan creative assets to verify required elements, secure URLs, restricted content compliance, and proper HTML5 or video implementation. These checks also confirm that the click-through flow works correctly.
Validators may continue scanning and test-clicking creatives over time. The initial validation period can create a temporary surge in clicks and pageviews that may affect campaign metrics. Demandbase technology typically filters out this IVT from the Campaigns dashboard.
Important: Creative validators do not generate ad impressions, so Demandbase does not bill customers for this activity. However, IVT from validators may still appear in external analytics platforms.
Bots
Bots are automated scripts that mimic human behavior on websites but are not related to verifying ad quality or campaign integrity. Unlike creative validators, bots do not originate from supply-side partners.
Demandbase actively works to detect and remove bot activity from Advertising results. However, the advertising industry continuously faces evolving techniques that bots use to conceal their identity.
Bot traffic can distort metrics such as bounce rate in external analytics platforms.
Testing Activity
A smaller portion of IVT comes from legitimate testing performed before or during campaign launch. This testing may be done by Demandbase advertising staff or customers.
For example, users may:
- Click an ad creative in the Creative Library to preview its appearance.
- Use a Demandbase-provided campaign launch link to confirm that the ad and landing page load correctly.
Filter IVT from Analytics Tools
You can identify visits to your ads and website that originated from IVT. Filtering analytics results in this way allows you to compare more consistent datasets between external analytics platforms and Demandbase Advertising.
Important: To troubleshoot IVT-related results and high bounce rates in Google Analytics, see Understanding Demandbase Site Analytics vs. External Analytics Platforms.