3 | Wasted Ad Spend Report 2024
Introduction
What is Invalid Trafc?
Invalid trafc (IVT) refers to any website visits that
don’t come from a real person with genuine interest.
It can include bots (both good and bad), fake users,
misattributed accidental clicks, malicious clicks from
competing advertisers, and otherwise invalid visitors that
have zero chance of converting to customers.
The current era of automation and articial intelligence means
bot activity is becoming more prevalent and sophisticated. The
2023 Imperva Bad Bot Report found that in 2022, nearly half
(47.4%) of all internet trafc came from bots, a 5.1% increase over
the previous year.
While there is an abundance of invalid activity on the internet,
not all of it has the same level of impact on businesses. In this
report, we specically hone in on the proportion of IVT that
has a direct detrimental effect on marketing performance and
business revenue. Namely, invalid trafc stemming from paid
media campaigns.
How Does Invalid Trafc Impact Businesses?
Invalid trafc isn’t a security problem. It’s a marketing black hole.
It instantly wastes budget - because those “visitors” will never
convert. And the nancial costs continue to stack up when you
consider lost revenue opportunities. The return on ad spend for
invalid clicks is always 0:1, which further sties business growth.
IVT also distorts analytics, leading to unwise budget allocation.
Spam leads, which often follow on from fake clicks, contaminate
CRMs, wasting the time and energy of sales teams. Projected
revenue forecasts become unpredictable. And the explosion of
advertising automation is only making the problem worse.
To help unpack the issue and the impact it has on businesses,
we’ve put together our rst annual report titled: Wasted Ad
Spend Report 2024: The Global Impact of Invalid Trafc
By analysing billions of paid ad clicks from thousands of
Lunio customers, we’ve exposed the true extent of the invalid
trafc problem across different industries, regions, advertising
channels, and more.
In addition to our own data, we’ve also partnered with Integral
Ad Science and Scope3 to give a more complete overview of the
problem and its downstream consequences.
Integral Ad Science specialise in protecting programmatic
media buying, and their data enabled us to dive even deeper
into global paid trafc trends affecting advertisers. And
data provided by Scope3, the world’s largest database of
georeferenced emissions factors, allowed us to gain a unique
understanding of the environmental impact of invalid trafc and
the digital advertising industry more broadly.
Our aim is to provide a data-driven picture of the threat posed
by invalid trafc, and empower marketers with insights on how
to maximise ad spend efciency, eliminate sources of fake ad
engagement, and reduce their carbon footprints.
