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\u00a0to defraud advertisers using fake views.<\/p>\n
The Media Ratings Council this summer put together guidelines<\/a> for tackling the problem, which comScore\u00a0advertising effectiveness VP Duncan Trigg<\/a> says is a big deal.<\/p>\n “It might be bot traffic, it might be domain hijacking, it might be impression stacking,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview.\u00a0<\/span>“It is a multi-billion-dollar white-collar-crime issue. It affects every platform, every device and every market.\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s the biggest thing that makes a difference to campaign effectiveness.”<\/p>\n Efforts are, of course, underway to tackle\u00a0ad fraud. But Trigg warns:\u00a0“The biggest\u00a0 <\/span>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\u2019s happening out in the marketplace.<\/span><\/p>\n “If you\u2019re not taking out the most sophisticated tracking and blocking of non-human traffic before you calculate view ability rates, you\u2019re going to get a misleading view ability rate – usually higher.”<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n