Bots, a tiny tech wonder, and the intelligent assistants of this generation. They are like Jarvis, who is always ready to help. These automated programs, also known as robots, are designed to mimic human interactions and perform tasks that would otherwise require human intervention. As technology continues to advance, the capability and the use of bots have become increasingly expanding, making them an essential tool for businesses and individuals alike. From customer service to advertisement, bots are being utilized to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall user experience.
In 2023, Juniper Research projects bot revenues will reach $9.2 billion. It is clear from this that bots are an effective advertising tool. The use of bots is prevalent in the creation and management of social media campaigns, the automation of customer service inquiries, and the collection of customer interaction data.
While the benefits of bots in the advertising industry are undeniable, it’s wise to consider the darker side of this technology., Malicious bots can be misused to make a negative impact on advertisers. They are used to scrape sensitive data, manipulate online advertising, and commit fraud.
For example, Bad bots are used to commit ad fraud by artificially inflating website traffic and clicks on ads, resulting in wasted ad spend for advertisers. 65% of all Internet traffic consists of bots out of which 40% is generated by bad bots, and the number has increased by 6.25 percent from the previous year. Additionally, bad bots target and exploit vulnerabilities in a brand’s digital advertising ecosystem and negatively impact the performance of the ad campaign. These malicious bots disrupt the digital advertising market and cause significant financial loss for the advertiser.
Impact of Bad Bot Traffic on Advertisers
Bad bot traffic has a negative impact on advertisers. They disrupt and undermine the effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns, waste ad spends, skew website analytics and cause a significant financial loss for the advertiser. Additionally, bad bots target and exploit vulnerabilities in a brand’s digital advertising ecosystem, such as click fraud and viewability fraud, and affect the performance of the ad campaign negatively.
Some of the specific ways that bad bot traffic can impact advertisers include:
1. Inflated metrics
Bad bots can inflate ad traffic and skew user engagement metrics, making it difficult for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns accurately.
2. Loss of revenue
Bots can be programmed to take actions, manipulate results and pollute data. As a result, advertisers often end up paying for impressions or clicks from bots instead of real people, resulting in decreased ROI and a loss of revenue. Overall, the presence of bots negatively affects the integrity of advertising data and results in significant financial losses for advertisers.
3. Automation leads to targeting the wrong audience
In most cases, marketers automate their campaigns in order to target users’ activity data and distribute ad funds without requiring human intervention. Nonetheless, if bots provide targeted audience data rather than real consumers, the ads may appear in the wrong place and at the wrong time.
Signs to identify bot traffic
1. An unusual spike in traffic
An unusual spike in traffic is an indication of bot traffic. The bots make large numbers of requests in a short period of time, causing a noticeable surge in traffic. In contrast, human traffic is usually more consistent and doesn’t show sudden spikes. If a website experiences an unusual spike in traffic, it’s imperative to check the source and behavior of the visitors to determine if they are bots or actual users.
2. High impressions.
High impressions can also be a sign of bot traffic. This is because bots often generate a large number of page views in a short period of time, leading to high impressions. On the contrary, human traffic is usually slower and generates fewer impressions so if a website experiences a large number of impressions, it’s critical to examine the source and behavior of the visitors to determine if they are bots or actual users.
3. Click-to-conversion rate is low
A low click-to-conversion rate can be an indication of bot traffic because bots typically don’t convert on websites, they only generate clicks. As a result, a high volume of bot traffic can lead to a lower click-to-conversion rate. If a website experiences a low click-to-conversion rate despite high traffic, it’s pertinent to investigate the source and behavior of the visitors to determine if they are bots or actual users.
4. Traffic from unusual locations
Bot traffic comes from unusual locations. This is because bots can be programmed in a way that it can generate a click from any location in the world, whereas human traffic is typically limited to certain geographical regions. If a website experiences traffic from unexpected or unfamiliar locations this clearly indicates that your traffic is under threat of a bot.
5. Analyze suspicious IP addresses.
The high volume of visits a campaign receives from a single IP address within a short period of time could indicate that the campaign is being targeted by multiple bots. Defending your ad campaigns from IP bot attacks is the best strategy to ensure they do not have access to your campaign.
Conclusion
Digital advertising campaigns should be protected from bot traffic to ensure accuracy and effectiveness as bot traffic can slow down website performance and interfere with business operations.
By eliminating bot traffic, advertisers can obtain a more accurate picture of their audience and the performance of their ad campaign. This will enable them to make informed decisions and effectively allocate their advertising budget while keeping the digital advertising campaign safe from bot traffic is vital to the efficiency of the campaign.
In this scenario, the use of an ad traffic validation solution can provide numerous benefits to protect and optimize the digital ad campaign. Ad fraud detection tools can detect and block fraudulent traffic, allowing advertisers to only pay for actual human engagement.
Additionally, this solution can help advertisers optimize their ad spending by providing real-time insights and analytics into their advertising efforts. With the help of an advanced media validation solution, the advertisers can protect the ad campaigns from the impact of bots and ensure their efficiency is not hampered.
