COLOGNE — As an acronym, it doesn’t seem to make any sense. But “IVT” (that’s “invalid traffic”) is now the new industry jargon for what had been called “non-human traffic”, the scourge of online ads being triggered to defraud advertisers using fake views.
The Media Ratings Council this summer put together guidelines for tackling the problem, which comScore advertising effectiveness VP Duncan Trigg says is a big deal.
“It might be bot traffic, it might be domain hijacking, it might be impression stacking,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “It is a multi-billion-dollar white-collar-crime issue. It affects every platform, every device and every market. It’s the biggest thing that makes a difference to campaign effectiveness.”
Efforts are, of course, underway to tackle ad fraud. But Trigg warns: “The biggest issue affecting the market right now is how brand safety, viewability and fraud detection are effectively becoming conjoined. The ability to separate them out with point vendors is dwindling massively because of the fraudulent activity that’s happening out in the marketplace.
“If you’re not taking out the most sophisticated tracking and blocking of non-human traffic before you calculate view ability rates, you’re going to get a misleading view ability rate – usually higher.”
This video is part of series of Beet videos produced at DMEXCO, presented by FreeWheel. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.