We hear a lot about bot fraud and fake traffic. There are astounding numbers and when the money is being paid for a brand budget but being lost to these bad actors, you can sure there’s no significant business growth coming from it.
It is essential to take this beyond the headlines, from abstraction and dive into what is happening here. Following is a vivid example of a bot campaign in action, with one of our clients. All names have been changed for confidentiality.
Background
A recent content-centric campaign was anchored around a major tentpole cultural event, whereby brand partners with a publisher to create custom content. Our role at Nudge was to measure the material and provide insight into it. Insurance and learnings on the buy, if you will. We measure up to 48 data points when people read or watch content, to understand how it is consumed and provide insight from that. A happy accident from this is that we capture bot or non-human traffic because the behavior stands out from the rest.
The campaign started with some red flags. Despite our ego and the creative pride that comes with making things, the fact is: people do not often re-read or re-watch content. Some do, but most don’t. Over a population of users, we typically expect 1.2 to 1.4 impressions per person. In this campaign, we saw…
