• by Laurie Sullivan , 5 hours ago

Ad platforms filter invalid traffic as marketers continue to keep a closer eye on duplicate clicks, bot patterns, and misleading actions by publishers.

Data released Tuesday estimates that 8.51% of all paid ad traffic is invalid, meaning nearly one in every 12 clicks does not come from a real user with genuine purchase intent. Put that into dollars and it comes to $63 billion in wasted global ads were spend on invalid traffic last year.

What counts as "real" traffic and how to measure genuine customer intent has become a major challenge in 2026.

AI-powered bots, some of which considered agentic, will not be considered fraudulent, but today do a better job of navigating websites and mimicking human browsing patterns.

Marketers that act proactively will “unlock missed revenue, make decisions based on cleaner data, and ensure they don’t continue to pay a stealth tax” on digital ad spend, Nick Morley, chief executive officer of Lunio, wrote in a report published Tuesday.

The data in Lunio’s report is based on 2.7 billion clicks analyzed between August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2025, across six ad platforms, eight industries, and 10 countries.

The report covers the most widely used advertising platforms -- including Google across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Display, and Demand Gen; Meta Platforms including Facebook and WhatsApp; Microsoft Bing and LinkedIn; TikTok, and X.

TikTok is the worst-performing major advertising platform, with an average invalid traffic rate of 24.2%.

Rapid user growth and high volumes of coordinated automated engagement have made TikTok particularly vulnerable to fake clicks and synthetic user behavior, according to the report.

But other social platforms such as LinkedIn and X showed high degrees of bot exposure too, with invalid traffic rates coming in at 19.88% and 12.79%, respectively.  

Of the leading social platforms, Meta performed best with an average invalid traffic rate of 8.20%.

Years of litigation and legal pressure have driven Meta to invest more in bot detection and ad-fraud prevention.

Lead-generation businesses experience 32.07% higher IVT rates than ecommerce brands, significantly distorting funnel performance

When analyzing business segments, gaming tops the chart of invalid traffic rates at 18.49%, followed by telecoms and utilities at 14.26%, education at 14.41%, and real estate at 13.61%.

Financial services and insurance recorded 10.12%, while retail sat nearer the lower end of the range at 6.03%

The invalid traffic rate for retail may appear to be modest, but the commercial impact tells a different story. Retail operates on some of the tightest margins in digital commerce, often single-digit profit percentages. Margins are between 5% and 8%, and a 6% invalid traffic rate can consume a significant amount of profit per transaction, according to the data.