Bot Traffic Affecting Ad Budgets Big Time

Are bots (i.e. non-human traffic) forcing you to waste money on performance advertising campaigns? A new report from Solve Media certainly suggests that's the case, estimating the global ad industry could waste up to $9.5 billion in 2013 as a result of bot activity.

According to its latest Bot Traffic Market Advisory, Solve Media is reporting that between 43 and 46 percent of Web advertising and 29 to 35 percent of mobile ad traffic exhibited "suspicious" activity. Actual bot traffic patterns for the second quarter remained consistent in a range of 24% to 29% for web advertising and 11% to 14% for mobile advertising.

"The waste and inefficiencies associated with showing ads to bots are frightening from a return on investment perspective," said Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media. "We're watching the video marketplace carefully and actively advising agencies on the topic of bot-safe media inventory. We encourage publishers to proactively add our free anti-bot security to their sites in order to guarantee human audiences."

Solve Media has been monitoring bot traffic for four years and now reviews over 230 million human verifications (on average) each month across 6,500 publishers.