bot traffic

In the AI era, according to Tim Frank, the man in charge of AI monetization at Microsoft, “information is the new bid.”

Historically, non-human traffic was viewed on a spectrum from benign to intentional fraud. But AI agents represent a legitimate audience that brands will have to understand and engage.

Rather than fighting the rising tide of AI search engines and agentic tools, Microsoft AI’s Nikhil Kolar says publishers and retailers should license access to their sites and create content that speaks directly to AI crawlers.

The problems with FAST’s rapid growth; streaming viewers get a bot-powered alternative to subscriptions and ads; and IAS uncovers a mobile app fraud network that infected millions of devices.

HUMAN has recently started complementing its bid request analysis by analyzing the time between when a bot clicks an ad and when the landing page loads. Now it’s offering the solution to individual advertisers.

CTV, like digital display before it, is facing fraud and mislabeled information. The prevailing advice for advertisers is to go directly to the networks and streaming platforms. However, buying direct comes with a fraud risk itself.

A recent Google DV360 Help Center update had some advertisers panicking that invalid impressions served through Google’s ad platform would soon double. But now Google says that’s not really the case.

The Google PMax whisperer releases his latest annual report; publishers brace for more disruptions from Google search updates; and stolen content is the least of Wikipedia’s gen AI concerns.

Nubai claims that if buyers don’t shell out for premium placements like on CNN and Fox News, Outbrain instead places their links on less-reputable sites that have been found to attract a high degree of sophisticated invalid traffic – aka bots.

The industry is too focused on quantity over quality. Unfortunately, it seems there are many people still chasing scale due to a lack of understanding.