On the bot-riddled open web, it can be a struggle to prevent ads from being served to invalid traffic (IVT).
To filter out IVT and prevent ad serving to bots, the ad industry focuses on data contained in bid requests, such as user agent info and IP addresses. But, given the billions of bid requests transacted by programmatic platforms every hour, shady traffic inevitably slips through.
Given the vulnerability of programmatic supply, ad verification provider HUMAN has recently started complementing its bid request analysis by analyzing the time between when a bot clicks an ad and when the landing page loads, said Geoff Stupay, SVP of product at HUMAN.
Examining these page-level signals alongside bid request data, he said, means HUMAN can identify bots at different points of the digital journey than it could before, he said.
On Tuesday, HUMAN rolled out a new offering, called Page Intelligence, that extends its IVT protection to also include advertisers’ landing pages, Stupay said. This approach effectively catches IVT at “the closest point to a conversion or to a brand engagement event,” he said.
The rollout also signals a notable change in HUMAN’s strategy: Whereas the verification vendor has long partnered directly with programmatic platforms like The Trade Desk and large platform publishers like LinkedIn, its new offering is for individual advertisers, Stupay said.
Keeping bad data out
Page Intelligence, like many other IVT detection methods, is a post-bid measurement. After all, a bot must have been served an ad in order to have clicked on it and ended up on a landing page.
So, the product isn’t necessarily aimed at preventing a bot from seeing an ad at all. Rather, it aids in post-campaign reconciliation, when brands and their partners account for IVT impressions that should not be paid for by the advertiser.
This method of IVT detection is also a safeguard against conversion data from bots tainting a brand’s first-party audience data, Stupay said. Having more granular data on the traffic that arrives on their landing pages should help advertisers make smarter decisions and prevent chasing faulty data, he said.
For example, if Page Intelligence finds that a recent form submission on a landing page was tied to a bot impression, then HUMAN can automatically discard that data before it makes its way into the brand’s CRM or CDP, Stupay said.
If certain media sellers generate conversions on clicks or form sign-ups, but those turn out to be simulated bots, brands could potentially cut off investment in that inventory.
Click-source agnostic
Also, because Page Intelligence analyzes the impression after it arrives on the landing page, the product provides advertisers with click-based data they don’t get from walled gardens, Stupay added.
For example, if an advertiser is running a verification pixel in its ad creative through most open web advertising platforms, they would be provided with some form of upstream signal about whether the ad was likely served to a bot, he said. But, if the click comes from a walled garden like Facebook, he said, “they’re going to have to evaluate what’s arrived when it’s arrived.”
Because HUMAN is looking at post-click data, “it doesn’t matter where the traffic is coming from,” Stupay said. So, whether the site visit came from a web display ad, a mobile in-app ad or a CTV ad impression, the product works the same.
To evaluate the traffic after it’s clicked an ad, HUMAN mostly relies on the same signals it looks at to catch IVT before it clicks an ad, such as user agent and IP address, Stupay said. For example, the system would be looking for data mismatches in the user agent or signs that the impression is tied to a headless web browser or a spoofed device. HUMAN gets access to these signals via a single line of JavaScript code deployed on the landing page.
Who makes the decision?
But beyond looking at common IVT-detection signals, Stupay said, Page Intelligence also has its “special sauce” that combines thousands of different inputs and historical data from HUMAN’s other bot-detection efforts.
Page Intelligence’s underlying tech is based on HUMAN’s MRC- and TAG-accredited IVT detection technology, Stupay said, and advertisers can expect the same level of IVT protection that HUMAN’s platform partners have long enjoyed. Although, he added, Page Intelligence itself is not currently MRC- or TAG-certified.
Speaking of the MRC, the certification group recently published a document related to pre-bid bot detection in response to an Adalytics report from earlier this year that claimed pre-bid IVT filtration provided by the major verification vendors did not reliably prevent ads from being served to bots. The MRC statement says that, while third-party verification providers can flag IVT using pre-bid filtration methods, “The decision to present a bid request or serve an ad solely rests with DSPs and SSPs.”
In other words, bot detection providers can identify bots, but it’s up to their platform partners to take that signal and decide not to serve the ad.
Page Intelligence is not a pre-bid product, so that vulnerability doesn’t apply, Stupay said. Page Intelligence also puts the data needed to make a determination about an ad impression directly into the advertiser’s hands, rather than giving it to the platform, he said.
Now advertisers can make their own choices, Stupay added.
“Maybe that means you ask for some kind of reconciliation. Maybe that means you just don’t work with that particular stream or target ads in that specific way,” he said. “Those are all decisions the customer can make.”
