• by Ray Schultz , August 30, 2023

An alarming  new study on click fraud should sober up both publishers and advertisers. 

Large percentages of clicks qualified as invalid traffic (IVT)  in June 2023, according to Q2 2023 Global Click Fraud Benchmarks, a study by Pixalate.

For starters, there was a 17% invalid click rate for all open programmatic advertising across desktop web, mobile web, and mobile in-app in June. In addition, there was a 21% invalid click rate for desktop web open programmatic advertising, a 16% invalid click rate for mobile web open programmatic ads and 13% invalid click rate for mobile app open programmatic ads. 

However, the 729x90 Leaderboard ad size drove an invalid click rate of 26% on mobile apps, twice that of the total mobile app invalid click average (13%). Moreover, 20% of all invalid clicks on mobile apps are now generated by click farms, the study says.

Pixalate notes that advertisers often optimize their campaigns for clicks, a fact that fraudsters can exploit by fake.

"The sophisticated schemes deployed by ad fraudsters are not just generating fake traffic but fake clicks as well,"  says Amit Shetty, VP of product, ad fraud, at Pixalate. 

Shetty adds, "Advertisers are willing to spend more for higher click-through rates. But this mindset should come with a heightened sense of scrutiny, as fraudsters always follow the money."

Pixalate conducted analytics on billions of open programmatic ad transactions and over 10 million clicks.