What is Invalid Traffic (IVT)?

Invalid traffic (IVT) is advertising activity, such as impressions or clicks, that does not come from a genuine user with real interest, including bots, crawlers and fraud. The MRC splits it into general (GIVT) and sophisticated (SIVT) invalid traffic.

Also known as: IVT, ad fraud, non-human traffic

How it works

Not every ad impression or click comes from a person who might buy something. Search engine crawlers load pages, bots imitate browsing, and fraudsters build schemes to collect ad money for traffic that is not real. The industry groups all of this under invalid traffic, and the Media Rating Council (MRC) sets the standards for how measurement companies detect and filter it. MRC describes IVT as traffic or media activity that does not meet certain quality or completeness criteria.

MRC splits IVT into two types, as summarised in its 2024 IVT interim updates:

  • General invalid traffic (GIVT) is traffic identified through routine filtration, largely using lists and parameter checks. Examples include bots, spiders and other crawlers, known invalid data-center traffic, and non-browser user agents or unknown browsers.
  • Sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) covers cases that are harder to detect and need advanced analytics, multi-point corroboration and sometimes significant human intervention. Examples include app ID spoofing, domain laundering and falsified site location, incentivized human invalid activity, adware and malware that inject ads or create unauthorized overlays, and misappropriated (pirated or stolen) content.

Accredited measurement vendors filter IVT so it is excluded from the impressions and clicks that advertisers pay for.

Why it matters

For advertisers, IVT wastes budget and distorts results. A campaign that looks efficient on paper may be paying for bots. For publishers, the cost shows up differently: inventory with high IVT gets discounted, blocked or dropped from buying lists, and honest publishers can lose out when fraudsters spoof their domain or app.

That is why IVT is closely linked to supply chain transparency. Tools such as ads.txt, sellers.json and the SupplyChain object help buyers confirm who is authorized to sell an inventory source, which makes spoofing harder. IVT also works alongside viewability: one asks whether an ad could be seen, the other whether a real person was there to see it.

Example

Illustrative example. A mid-size entertainment publisher buys social traffic to promote a new section and soon sees page views jump but session time collapse. Its measurement vendor flags a large share of the new traffic as invalid. The publisher stops the paid source, reviews its ads.txt file and checks reports by traffic source each week. Its buyers see the IVT rate return to normal, which protects the trust its inventory depends on.

IncrementX perspective

Representation only works when buyers trust the inventory they are offered. IncrementX's media representation work begins with inventory understanding and advertiser alignment, and clean, transparent supply is part of what makes inventory worth packaging for demand. Our article on the case for quality over quantity in programmatic media explores why traffic quality matters to long-term monetization.