Reference library · Cross-media measurement

Invalid Traffic (IVT) Rate

Invalid Traffic (IVT) Rate is the share of delivered impressions or clicks identified as non-human (bots, crawlers) or fraudulent (click farms, ad stacking, spoofed apps) rather than real user activity. It is measured by an independent verification vendor and used to determine what portion of delivered volume should not be billed.

Formula

IVT Rate = (Invalid Impressions / Total Delivered Impressions) x 100, where Invalid Impressions = GIVT (General IVT, known bots/spiders) + SIVT (Sophisticated IVT, hidden fraud)

Worked example

A programmatic campaign in Poland delivers 5,000,000 impressions. The verification vendor flags 110,000 as GIVT (data-center traffic, known bot lists) and 65,000 as SIVT (non-human patterns caught by heuristic detection), for 175,000 invalid impressions total. IVT Rate = 175,000 / 5,000,000 x 100 = 3.5%. The buyer disputes billing on those 175,000 impressions, leaving 4,825,000 as valid, billable delivery.

How it is used

Buyers pull IVT rate from the third-party verification vendor's post-campaign report, not from the publisher's or SSP's own ad server, and use it to request credits or make-goods on flagged volume. The rate is also checked per placement and per supply source, since IVT concentrates heavily in a small number of low-quality inventory paths rather than spreading evenly across a campaign. The common mistake is treating the vendor's headline IVT figure as GIVT-only, understating true invalid traffic because SIVT requires deeper behavioral detection and is often reported separately.

The common mistake

Use the independent verification vendor's combined GIVT+SIVT figure to dispute billing, not the publisher's self-reported number or GIVT alone.

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