Invalid Traffic Detection

Stop Invalid Traffic, Complete IVT Advertising Protection

IPQS provides complete protection against sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) methods including residential proxies and automated software that resembles human-like behavior. By combining the leading IP Reputation Intelligence with bot pattern recognition, your ads will never be at risk of suspension for IVT advertising.

Google defines invalid traffic as any click or impression that does not come from a real user or served to a user without a genuine interest in the advertisement's product. Overall ad fraud continues to rise year over year, consisting of over 40% of all clicks online in 2024, and wasting upwards of $7 billion in advertiser budgets per year. Google uses average IVT traffic rates to identify AdSense or AdMob publishers with excessive clicks generated by invalid traffic.

If you have received any of the following error messages then it's likely bots, competitors, or click exchanges are actively clicking your ads:

• In your case, we have detected invalid activity on your AdSense account.
• AdSense account disabled for invalid traffic.
• Invalid traffic concerns.
• Ad serving limited.

Invalid Traffic Explained, Types of IVT Advertising

Since Google has a duty to protect their advertisers from inflated clicks and fraudulent earnings, they will actively suspend Google Ads accounts for adsense invalid traffic or those actively engaging in any type of click fraud. Advertisers tend to notice when low quality clicks are inflating their stats and will request a refund directly with Google Ads or similar pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms.

Let's explore the 2 different types of IVT traffic fraud affecting publishers:

• General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) — A less malicious form of IVT ad fraud caused by online web crawlers, search engine spiders, and ad spy tools. GIVT is usually generated without the publisher's knowledge.
• Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) — SIVT fraud uses much more advanced techniques such as proxies, adware, and hijacked devices by malware to mimic real human behavior and clicks. SIVT traffic can be so sophisticated that even Google is unable to detect 5%-10% of all SIVT traffic. Incentivized clicks and PPC click exchange programs can also be classified in this category of IVT, however these methods are very quick to be detected by AdSense and AdMob quality control algorithms.

Deploy leading click fraud protection with IPQS by adding just a few lines of code to your site or mobile apps. Real-time filtering for invalid clicks protects your ads from ever being at risk for suspension. Accurately score traffic in every region and automatically prevent ad serving to high risk visitors and suspicious devices.

Protect Your Ads From IVT In Minutes

Accurate protection to detect invalid traffic with 10x more affordable pricing and 40% greater detection rates for proxies, bots, and fake clicks.

How To Detect Invalid Traffic In AdSense?

It's very common for fraudsters to use proxies or automated browsing methods with click fraud. Nearly 90% of invalid traffic detected by IPQS is on some form of a proxy or VPN connection. By using a simple call to our low-latency IP Address Reputation API, your site can quickly determine which visitors can be safely served ads without worrying about AdSense invalid traffic.

Combining these techniques with web device fingerprinting provides complete protection against hijacked devices and adware that uses the same behavior patterns to fraudulent inflate clicks. IPQS combines these checks into one simple solution that can be added to your site with a few lines of code. This solution also works well to stop competitors from clicking ads maliciously. For more information, please see our complete guide on managing IVT advertising fraud.

Protect Your Site From Invalid Traffic

Ad fraud is a growing issue for the digital advertising industry. The methods described above to detect invalid traffic are a proven solution for detecting invalid adsense traffic without impacting the user experience for your legitimate users. Safely serve ads worldwide to users that pass our verification checks against bots, automated behavior, and proxies. Full support is also extended for IVT advertising with video impressions, pay-per-click, cost-per-install (CPI), or cost-per-action (CPA) models.

Managing AdMob Invalid Traffic

Keeping your mobile apps monetized is essential for any mobile app. IPQS offers an easy to use mobile device fingerprinting SDK which provides instant protection against sophisticated invalid traffic, such as bots and fraudulent click directly in your apps. All forms of AdMob invalid traffic can be easily detected with this SDK for Android and iOS including emulators, click farms, install farms, location spoofing, adware, and hijacked devices. Completely protect against general invalid traffic and even advanced bot traffic. Your site history in Google Analytics can be a useful indicator for identifying suspicious traffic in your website or app.

Block Invalid Traffic

IPQS makes it easy to block invalid traffic by performing reputation checks for an IP address or device against our threat blacklist. Identify abusive ad impressions with advanced analytics from invalid traffic metrics across the thousands of websites that have digital ads embedded on their site or app which are protected from ad fraud by IPQS. Fraudulent IP addresses and risky devices, such as emulators, virtual devices, device farms, and location spoofing are all high confidence signals of invalid clicks. Search engine bots are bypassed from our bot detection checks to ensure they can continue to crawl your website. Abusive IPs and bot traffic from data centers and proxy servers will always be considered as high risk invalid traffic.

Easy Setup, Install IVT Protection in Minutes

Deploy a simple API directly in your sites or apps to filter ad serving based on the quality of the visitor. Our low-latency API provides a real-time response in under 100ms to prevent sophisticated invalid traffic abuse.

Start Filtering Click Fraud

IPQS provides one simple solution for managing invalid traffic and all forms of click fraud. Real-time filtering you can set and forget.