The high rate of fake web traffic is a serious problem for business leaders. Results from our research indicate that 2023 saw a 58% year-over-year increase in fake traffic – and that it makes up 17.9% of total web traffic.
Fake or invalid traffic is any type of web engagement generated from nonhuman or malicious activity, such as bots or click farms. It compromises business data by altering engagement metrics, giving you a false impression of real website visitors and engagement.
Here are six ways fake web traffic specifically compromises your data integrity and ultimately performance.
Distorted Conversion Rates
Fake page views from nonhuman users are a serious problem because aggregate page views are the denominator for many of your critical top-of-funnel conversations such as request demo forms or trial sign-ups. Your conversion rates might be artificially deflated due to nonhuman visitors skewing the visibility you need to be effective.
Stop and think: Where are your page views actually coming from? More importantly, how do you know for sure?
Similarly, bounce rates serve as a key metric and indicator for web content and design quality. After all, if people leave your site shortly after arriving on a page, or if a large portion of visitors do not navigate off of the home page, there must be a reason. Right?
Not so fast. These data points are easy for fake users and bots to corrupt. Essentially, all of your conversion or engagement rates are likely bogged down by “users” who were never going to convert in the first place!
Without filtering out fake traffic, your numbers may be skewed by 20% or more, giving you a flawed picture of metrics necessary to understanding website effectiveness and general demand in the marketplace.
Degraded Customer Experiences
Inventory hoarding is just one way that fake traffic degrades the customer experience. This is a practice where bots fill carts with items and leave them to sit. Those items show as low in stock or unavailable in virtual inventories, creating a false scarcity event. Customers who are shopping for them see the status and go elsewhere, leaving your site without making a purchase.
According to our analysis of the 2023 holiday shopping season, 22% of web traffic to eCommerce sites were fake, more than double the number from the prior year. A staggering one in five online holiday shoppers were not real. This poses a huge problem for actual customers, who will move on to the next site if they don’t find what they’re looking for.
Compromised SEO Rankings
Fake traffic affects the customer experience in other ways, too. Bogged-down servers that cannot keep up with traffic spikes can result in slower page speeds or even website downtime that affects both user access and your search engine ranking. Google considers page speed as part of the user experience, and it figures into page rankings. A score of 90 or above is considered good, while you should work on improving scores between 50 and 89.
If fake traffic is constantly attacking your site, you might lose out on opportunities for your product to be found at the right time by your highest-intent customers.
Also not to be overlooked, flawed A/B testing results full of bots misguide website experience changes: you may unknowingly introduce more friction to customers, move forward with irrelevant messaging, or ship ineffective visual changes that turn away inbound traffic.
Polluted Operational Workflows
Web traffic polluted by fake users also wreck additional workflows and processes downstream.
Fake visitors ultimately flood web-based remarketing lists and nullify their effectiveness. That same data also infiltrates lookalike audiences for demand gen campaigns, leading to a snowball effect of inefficiency at the top of the funnel.
Similarly, bots and bad actors who complete web forms hog precious space in your CRM and marketing automation platforms…and it only gets worse. These same “users” infiltrate nurture emails and newsletters… then their emails begin to bounce (they aren’t real, after all), degrading your email send reputation and deliverability rates. This drastically increases the risk that your emails to real users get flagged as spam or never make it to their inbox in the first place.
Lost Revenue Opportunities
Our 2024 State of Fake Traffic report shows that at least 4.1% of fake traffic comes from paid sources, depending on the industry. When we zoom out, the numbers are far more concerning: Digital advertising spend in the U.S. alone hit $270 billion in 2023, which means that marketing departments wasted over $10 billion on ads that attracted fake website visitors last year!
Assuming at least 4.1% of traffic from digital ads are fake or nonhuman and leveraging a standard Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) of 4:1, that’s over $40 billion in lost revenue opportunity.
To make it worse, the data gained from fake web visits feed back into analyses and lead to poor decisions about how to allocate future spend and target unknowingly polluted audiences. This effect grows over time, creating larger deficits between advertising spending and the ability to target real buyers and achieve business objectives.
Drained Go-To-Market Resources
Costs go far beyond the financial impact of spending money on ineffective campaigns. Contextualize the time, effort and manpower devoted to analysis, strategy, and content creation for underperforming channels. What about the rise in internal tension and mistrust? Very quickly your operations can fall into a state of despair.
Protect Your Data and Funnel Efficiency with CHEQ
To be clear, not all bots and fake traffic are out to wreak havoc. But the malicious ones are good at what they do, and they are getting better all the time. Generative AI has changed the landscape, moving scrapers, automated tools, and sophisticated bots to the top of the threat list.
The good news is that we can detect this traffic — our research shows that we can. As a leader in Go-to-Market Security, CHEQ is ready to help you spot fake traffic before it disrupts your analytics data and business-critical workflows. Get a demo to learn how we can help you mitigate the impact of fake web traffic across your digital initiatives.
From collecting leads to taking orders and providing customer service, form fields play a crucial role in user experience. However, the use of automation and bots has made forms a prime target for spammers and hackers.
A form bot is a type of automated software that submits forms on websites at a high rate, bypassing any security measures.
Here, we will explore the world of form bots to explain what they are, how they work, and most importantly, how to protect your business against their negative effects, including spammy leads, data breaches, false analytics, and more.
Form Bots: How they work and the problems they cause
Often called form-filling bots, form bots automate the process of filling out and submitting online forms. While harmless in theory, these bots are designed to fraudulently pose as a human user. They are usually used in malicious ways, and are posed to cause a business many issues.
Form bots can be used to access gated content, flooding online forms with fake or stolen consumer data, providing no real or legitimate information. For a business, the data presented seems valid and coming from a ‘real person’, with some form bots even mimicking human behavior during the form-filling process. This allows for malicious activity including phishing, spamming and other fraudulent practices that can adversely affect your business.
Unreliable leads become costly
Many companies rely heavily on paid partnerships to promote their product or services. In turn, these businesses receive leads that fill out forms on their website. Fraudsters commonly pose as a reliable partner and exploit these companies by using form bots to generate fake or bad leads, later claiming credit and collecting a large payment. In many cases, businesses do not begin to realize these leads are unreliable until after a payment has been made.
Not only that, but, as a business, the more form bots fill out your website’s forms, the more your budgeted expenses deplete. Resources become wasted chasing down leads with no tangible outcome. Budgeted email campaigns go unseen, costly methods like ad retargeting fail to produce results, and revenue of brands relying on premium content or subscriptions are lost. Over time real leads can be overlooked and become missed opportunities. Even worse, as these efforts continue, businesses can suffer a substantial financial loss.
Click Hijacking attacks increased 125% in 2022. Learn more in our State of Fake Traffic 2023 report.
Form bots create a burden on website traffic
While form bots are not real people visiting your business’ website, they are still seen on the backend as site visitors. If your site is receiving a lot of traffic, real or fraudulent, your website can become unresponsive. This can turn away actual visitors frustrated with slow loading times.
In 2018 Google reported that mobile users’ bounce rate increased by as much as 123% when page load time increased from one second to ten seconds. For a visitor filling out multiple forms across multiple competing websites, any type of additional hassle can become the deciding factor in whether or not a form is filled, creating the potential of losing multiple legitimate leads.
Your competition gets ahead
In highly competitive markets where businesses are required to be fast-paced and proactive, form bots are a serious threat. Time theft is a destructive side effect of form bots. Consider it this way – while your business is chasing down fake leads from a bot, your competition could be closing with actual leads that may have been receptive to your product or service. In an even more concerning scenario, sometimes scammy competitors use form bots with malicious intent, throwing off potential leads and burdening your website performance.
Protect your business from form bots: Strategies and best practices
With the dangers of form bots at hand, it is crucial that your business takes proactive steps to protect against fraudulent leads. Here are a few tools and best practices that your business should follow:
Set up ReCAPTCHA
With Google ReCAPTCHA, you can prevent automated software from engaging in abusive activities on your site by using a risk analysis engine and adaptive CAPTCHAs. Each visitor’s behavior is analyzed to determine whether it is a bot or a human. Visitors either receive a simple box to check or a more involved puzzle that requires identifying a picture.
ReCAPTCHA is free, easy to set up, and requires little maintenance once installed. However, advanced bots are sometimes able to bypass reCAPTCHA, so it’s important to use other spam prevention methods in addition to it.
The biggest drawback to ReCAPTCHA and similar solutions is that it creates substantial friction in the user experience. A frustrating or slow authorization process can often cause users to abandon a form, task, or checkout altogether in search of a smoother process elsewhere.
Require visitors to double opt-in
A double opt-in form requires users to confirm their email address before their submission is accepted, protecting against form bots. In this process, users fill out a form to provide their email address and then receive a confirmation email containing a link that they must click to confirm their email address is correct and that they wish to subscribe.
Although double opt-in forms provide a high level of protection against form bots, they also add an extra step to the form submission process, which will frustrate some users and often drastically increase form abandonment. For that reason, it’s best to save this technique for pages and forms that are a necessity for the user, such as forms for changing travel plans or updating account information, as opposed to using it on one-time use forms such as downloads or checkout procedures.
Add form bot traps
Form bot traps are a type of security measure designed to prevent automated bots from submitting forms on websites. Hidden fields or challenges can be created inside a form that prevents a bot from completing it, while any legitimate human users will be able to easily pass.
Another type of form bot trap is called a honeypot trap. Unlike a form bot trap, a honeypot trap is specifically designed to draw in a form bot by creating fields that only a bot could see. Using a honeypot trap, bots will automatically fill out all form fields, including hidden ones, while legitimate users would not. When a bot attempts to submit a form, website owners can detect it using a honeypot trap and take appropriate action, such as blocking the submission or displaying a CAPTCHA challenge.
Rate limiting
A rate-limiting technique restricts the number of requests or actions a service or application can handle within a given timeframe. To prevent bots from submitting forms, rate limiting can be used to limit the number of submissions made by a single IP address or user account.
One IP address might be allowed to submit 10 forms per hour, for example. Bots that submit large numbers of forms quickly will reach the rate limit and be prevented from submitting any more forms.
Various techniques can be used on the server side to implement rate limiting, for example, using a database to track how many form submissions are coming from each IP address and blocking or throttling those that exceed the limit. Rate limiting can also be handled using libraries such as express-rate-limit (for Node.js) and rate limiter (for Python).
When setting up rate limiting, it’s important to consider whitelisted IP addresses, such as IPs from your own company, so that your employees are not affected by the rate limit rules.
It’s important to note that rate limiting alone is not sufficient to completely prevent form bots, so it’s often used with other approaches, such as CAPTCHA or hidden fields, to provide a more thorough defense against them.
Use IP and Geolocation Measures
Form bots can also be prevented by using IP and geolocation measures together by identifying and blocking requests from certain locations or IP ranges that are known to be associated with bot activity.
Using this method, bots can be blocked from the traffic coming from data centers or hosting providers.
Geolocation data can be used to block bot traffic from specific countries or regions. Form submissions can be verified by comparing their IP addresses against a database of known IP ranges and their associated countries and regions.
The blocking of IP addresses and geolocations can prevent bot activity, but it can also block legitimate users if they are blocked by mistake. You can prevent this by using a form to request unblocking IP addresses or locations.
Leverage a Fraud and Bot Detection tool
While the techniques outlined above can give you some piece of mind and can be quite effective in certain circumstances, most of these tools also have significant drawbacks, such as increased friction on the user experience or heavy labor costs for your IT department. The best solution to stop form bots is to leverage a fraud and bot detection tool. Not only do these tools detect and block invalid traffic, but they also save valuable time and keep friction for legitimate users to a minimum.
CHEQ leverages thousands of security challenges to evaluate site traffic in real-time, determine whether a visitor is legitimate, suspicious, or invalid, and take appropriate action in blocking or redirecting that user. For paid traffic, CHEQ automatically updates IP exclusion lists to reflect the constantly changing threat landscape, saving you valuable time and ad spend.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a form bot, and how does it work?
Form bots are automated software that can submit forms on websites. Using predetermined data, form bots simulate human actions while filling out forms. Forms can be automatically submitted at a high rate, bypassing any security measures designed to prevent automated submissions.
How do form bots harm businesses?
A form bot can cause businesses several problems, including data breaches, distortion of analytics, abuse of business resources, revenue loss, and email marketing issues.
How can I protect my business from form bots?
Several methods can be used to prevent form bots, including fraud detection software, CAPTCHAs, form bot traps, rate limiting, IP blocking, and double opt-in forms.
What are some signs that my business may be a target for form bots?
The number of form submissions from a single IP address, the number of submissions with invalid or fake data, and the number of submissions in a short period of time may indicate that a business is a target for form bots.
What should I do if I suspect that my business is being targeted by form bots?
You should take immediate action if you suspect your website or data is being attacked by form bots. Implementing security measures such as CAPTCHAs, hidden fields, rate limiting, IP blocking, and double opt-in forms can help. Additionally, you may want to consider using a service or tool that can help you detect and prevent bot activity, like CHEQ. Consult a security expert or contact law enforcement if the situation is severe.
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a crucial security tool, designed to filter out malicious traffic through a set of predefined rules. Security professionals have traditionally relied on WAFs to defend against familiar threats, such as known malicious user agents and blacklisted IP addresses. However, the effectiveness of WAFs in the current cybersecurity landscape is increasingly questioned.
But as bots become increasingly sophisticated, a question arises: Are WAFs still equipped to discern the nuances between human users and automated bots? The answer, more often than not, leans towards no. The issue is inherent to WAFs’ design, which focuses on known threats but falls short in real-time detection and response to the complex, adaptive bots that now dominate the cyber threat horizon.
How WAFs Work: The Basics
Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) are designed with a specific goal: to shield web applications from attacks that exploit common software vulnerabilities. Their primary task is to analyze web traffic via both GET and POST-based HTTP requests and then enforce a set of predefined rules or policies to identify and filter out suspicious traffic that matches known attack signatures. In essence, they act as a filter, separating safe traffic from potential threats. To accomplish this, WAFs typically rely on one of three security models: negative, positive, or hybrid.
- Negative Security Model: Also known as a “deny list,” this model blocks requests that match known attack signatures. It operates on the principle of allowing all traffic except for what is explicitly identified as malicious based on predefined signatures of known attacks. This model is effective against familiar threats but might not catch new or unknown attacks.
- Positive Security Model: Known as an “allow list,” this model permits only requests that match a known pattern of good behavior. Everything that does not fit this pattern is blocked. This approach is generally more secure than the negative model because it can block even zero-day attacks. However, it can be more restrictive and may inadvertently block legitimate traffic if not carefully configured.
- Hybrid Security Model: This model combines elements of both negative and positive models. It first uses signatures to filter traffic (negative model) and then checks if the remaining requests match the pattern of known good behavior (positive model). This approach aims to balance security with usability, trying to block malicious traffic while minimizing false positives.
WAFs can be set up in various ways. They can be cloud-based, host-based, or network-based and are often deployed through a reverse proxy, meaning they stand between the user and the server, inspecting traffic before it reaches the web application.
Where WAFs Come Up Short
While WAFs are effective against known threats, their reliance on static, predefined rules can be a limitation. WAFs are designed to protect websites or web apps from known attacks, such as SQL injections, session hijacking, and cross-site scripting. They use a set of rules that filter out good bot traffic from bad bot traffic. In particular, WAFs look for requests that carry familiar attack signatures.
As a result, WAFs can only block familiar threats. They’re ineffective for blocking today’s ever-changing, advanced bots that don’t carry obvious attack signatures. In addition, many bot attacks, such as account takeover fraud, remain within perfectly normal business logic. It just looks like someone is trying to log in, which a WAF won’t recognize as a potential problem.
WAFs also rely heavily on IP reputation to manage bots. If the IP reputation of a request is bad, it assumes all activity from that IP will be bad. Conversely, if the IP reputation is good, it is likely to let all requests coming from that IP through. As mentioned in previous articles, bot operators can now rotate high-quality, residential IPs cheaply and easily, making a WAF an ineffective solution to detect and prevent bots.
Three Ways Sophisticated Bots and Bad Actors Bypass WAFs
Evasion Tactics: IP Spoofing and Rotating IPs
The simplest way to evade a static ruleset is to simply avoid it. To do so, hackers often engage in IP spoofing to disguise their network identity by altering the IP address in the packet headers. This allows them to masquerade as a trusted source, bypassing IP-based filtering rules of a WAF. Attackers may also use botnets or proxy services that rotate through a wide range of IP addresses. Each request appears to come from a different source, rendering IP-based blocking ineffective. WAFs that rely heavily on IP reputation systems are particularly vulnerable to this tactic. As IPs keep changing, it becomes challenging for the WAF to detect and block malicious traffic consistently. This method is especially prevalent in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and automated web scraping, where numerous requests are sent from varied IPs, overwhelming the WAF’s ability to track and block all malicious sources.
Concealing Malicious Traffic with SSL Encryption
Attackers exploit SSL encryption to bypass Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) by hiding malicious payloads within encrypted traffic. Since SSL/TLS encryption secures the content of data packets during transmission, WAFs without SSL decryption capabilities cannot inspect the encrypted content. Malicious actors leverage this by encrypting harmful requests, knowing that such traffic will pass through the WAF without being analyzed for threats.
Exploiting Scanning Constraints by Padding Request Size
Attackers circumvent Web Application Firewalls by exploiting limitations in their scanning capabilities, particularly regarding request size. Knowing that many WAFs only scan a finite amount of bytes within a request, attackers deliberately create oversized requests. Typically, real-world HTTP(S) GET or POST requests are only a few hundred bytes to maybe 1-2 kilobytes in size. However, attackers pad these requests – for example, with large headers, cookies, or POST body text – to exceed sizes that WAFs efficiently scan, often going beyond 8 kilobytes. This tactic effectively bypasses WAFs, as many are not configured to scan or log anomalously large requests. This oversight is partly due to the computational expense and increased costs associated with scanning larger requests. Consequently, some WAFs, in an effort to be cost-competitive, do not enable enhanced scanning features by default, leaving web applications and APIs vulnerable to such padded attacks.
Towards a Future-Proof Web Security with CHEQ’s On-Site Security
The limitations of traditional Web Application Firewalls, particularly against sophisticated bots and advanced cyber threats, underscore the need for a more dynamic solution. CHEQ’s On-Site Security (OSS) offers a ‘GTM Native’ protection layer specifically designed to combat these challenges. Unlike conventional WAFs, OSS excels in real-time detection of malicious activities, ensuring robust defense against a wide array of threats, including those that exploit the inherent weaknesses of traditional WAFs.
OSS stands out by offering advanced security features while minimizing friction to customer journeys. It integrates seamlessly with your GTM tech stack, enhancing your security posture without compromising user experience. With OSS, your site transforms into a ‘safe zone,’ protecting both your key site assets and your legitimate visitors from threats like malicious scrapers, scalper bots, and sophisticated botnets.
Discover Advanced Protection with CHEQ’s On-Site Security
Elevate your cybersecurity strategy with CHEQ’s On-Site Security. Reach out to us for a detailed demonstration and see how our solution can seamlessly blend with your existing infrastructure, offering unparalleled protection against evolving digital threats.
Over the past 40 years, the internet has expanded into a massive highway of information–with billions of daily active users and trillions of daily engagements–driving innovation, growth, and connectivity on a global scale.
But as the internet has grown in scale and sophistication, the quality and authenticity of its traffic have decreased as the web is increasingly flooded with automation tools, bots (good or bad), and users who, for one reason or another, aren’t genuine. In the marketing industry, this traffic is known as Invalid Traffic (IVT).
To help better understand this phenomenon and the impact it has on businesses, CHEQ has conducted the first annual State of Fake Traffic report.
By analyzing billions of data points from tens of thousands of anonymized campaigns, funnels, and websites protected by CHEQ, we were able to gain accurate insights into the scope of the fake traffic problem and how it affects different platforms, industries, and regions. In this blog post, we’ll examine the leading referral sources for fake traffic in an effort to show which platforms are leading sources of bot traffic. For more information on how specific industries, regions, and platforms are affected by fake traffic, download the full 35-page report here.
What is Invalid Traffic (IVT)?
Invalid traffic is web traffic that consists of bots, fake users, and otherwise invalid users who cannot turn into legitimate customers. This could mean harmless bots like search engine web scrapers or malicious traffic like ad fraud botnets.
Google defines invalid traffic as “any activity that doesn’t come from a real user with genuine interest. It can include accidental clicks caused by intrusive ad implementations, fraudulent clicking by competing advertisers, advertising botnets, and more.”
To Google, IVT is primarily a concern because it can be used to artificially inflate a publisher’s ad earnings, a practice that is against Google Ad’s terms of service. But invalid traffic isn’t limited to paid traffic; it also makes up a large portion of direct traffic and unique site visitors and has plenty of adverse effects downstream, from polluted marketing analytics to wasted remarketing efforts.
Invalid Traffic’s Impact on Marketing Organizations
Historically, IVT has been a major concern for information technology and security teams looking to guard organizations from bad actors disguising their online footprint to commit attacks. However, as today’s CMOs have realized, IVT is also a prevalent problem for marketers and go-to-market teams.
For marketers and businesses dependent on web traffic to drive sales, this creates a unique challenge: Because of the prevalence of IVT, nearly every marketing funnel, campaign, and operation is impacted to some degree, oftentimes in very harmful ways.
Where IVT is present, audiences, CDP segments, and CRMs become polluted, campaigns become optimized toward fake users, and revenue opportunities are missed. Analytics and BI systems are skewed by bad data, leading to poor insights and worse decisions made on bad information.
Additionally, website and conversion funnels are disrupted by invalid leads and visitors. This is a challenge that must be dealt with, sooner, rather than later.
Examining Invalid Traffic by Source
Fake traffic is a persistent threat that affects all digital marketing channels. Left unaddressed, this fake traffic will waste advertising budgets and create negative downstream effects such as poorly optimized and ineffective campaigns, confused analytics, and inaccurate attribution.
Despite the best efforts of search engines, ad networks, and social media platforms to mitigate fraud and falsification through dedicated teams and built-in tools, there remains a significant ingress of fake traffic across all platforms.
Our analysis of billions of fake traffic referrals found a general level of parity in fake traffic across most platforms, with some notable exceptions. The general findings of our research is outlined in the chart below:
Social Fake Traffic Rates Climb as Professional Networks Attract Bad Actors
While the general fake traffic rates for social media platforms were lower than comparable search and display ads, one category of social media had, by far, the highest fake traffic rates of any platform studied.
Professional networking platforms had an average invalid referral rate of 12.4%, with 9.7% of paid traffic and 15.3% of organic traffic determined to be invalid.
For hackers, these platforms make a convenient group of high-value targets.
For those committing ad fraud, the incentive is even stronger. At an average of $5.58 per click in 2022, the cost-per-click for professional networks is typically up to five times that of typical social and PPC costs. From an attacker’s point of view, that makes it five times more efficient to target a campaign on these sites.
Click Hijacking Attacks Drive Fake Traffic to Display Ads
Display ads are the oldest form of online advertising, and they’re still an extremely effective tool that allows businesses to reach a broad audience and raise brand awareness. However, because these ads are delivered to third-party websites, they are often easily manipulated by malicious actors. Display ads are particularly vulnerable to clickjacking attacks, which grew by 125% across all platforms in 2022.
This deluge of these attacks lead to a fraud rate of 7.2% for displays in 2022, 40% higher than the rate for search ads.
Click hijacking occurs when a valid user clicks on an asset, such as a link or advertisement, that appears to be legitimate, but it is actually a disguised malicious element, which may install malware, or redirect users. Last year, researchers discovered a set of Google Chrome extensions that had been installed over one million times was hijacking searches and inserting affiliate links into web pages, disrupting user experience, and costing retailers thousands in affiliate fraud. In the case of a display ad, an attacker may use various techniques, such as adding hidden layers or modifying the code of a webpage, to cause a display ad to be clicked without the user’s knowledge. The attacker can then collect payment for the fake click from the advertiser.
This type of attack can be difficult to detect and prevent because it occurs on the client side, and the user’s browser is often not able to distinguish between a legitimate click and a hijacking click.
Viewbots Inflate Streaming Numbers and Burn Advertising Dollars
Streaming platforms had an unprecedented reach in 2022. The top streaming site reaches more people aged 18-49 than all TV networks combined, and it reaches them with more ads–which are statistically more likely to hold viewer attention, and ultimately to convert.
But many of those ad viewers are not human. In 2022, streaming platforms generated the highest invalid rate for paid traffic of any category, at 11.1%. Based on the ad revenue figures of just one streaming platform, that could amount to over $3 billion in wasted ad spend.
So where is all of this traffic coming from? The answer is view bots, a relatively new form of fake traffic in which pieces of automated software (bots) are used to view streaming videos or live streams in order to artificially boost the view count and generate fake engagement–and fake ad views–for unscrupulous creators.
Most view bots are simple scripts that open a video in a headless browser, but more complicated viewbots may also create fake accounts to mimic logged-in viewers, and can even incorporate a chatbot capability that will spam the stream’s chat or comments section with artificial banter to make audience numbers appear more legitimate. Some viewbots will even click through on ads to increase the perceived click-through rate. And these bot networks are available for rent for prices as low as $10/month.
The impact of these fake viewers goes far beyond fake clicks–most established creators offer partner programs, where they earn a commission for mentions or ad impressions.
If those impressions are generated by bots, not real people, then the ad budget used to create and place those ads has essentially been wasted.
If it costs $2000 for 100,000 impressions, and 15-20% of those impressions are fake, that’s $150-200 wasted. Considering most advertising campaigns on these platforms measure impressions in the millions, the costs of those fake impressions can add up fast. Furthermore, with key performance metrics becoming skewed by fake traffic, decision making becomes increasingly difficult.
Get All the Details in the State of Fake Traffic Report
Want to know more about the state of fake traffic in 2023? Download the full report here to get a full overview of fake traffic threat groups and types, how fake traffic breaks down across traffic sources, and more
In this 35-page report, we offer new insights into invalid traffic trends and statistics as we:
- Share invalid traffic rates and trends
- Examine prominent and growing threat types
- Compare invalid rates across 11 major industries
- Compare invalid traffic by region of origination
- Compare invalid rates for paid and organic traffic generated by leading ad platforms, search engines, and social media platforms.
Download our free report today and learn about the latest trends and insights in the world of invalid traffic.
About the author:
This post was written by Yoel Israel, the CEO of Wadi, the leading digital agency that specializes in digital marketing for cybersecurity brands, and Cyfluencer, a content-sharing platform for cybersecurity vendors & influencers.
Cybercriminals are an increasing concern for companies worldwide. Cyber-attacks have become a popular way for criminals to extort money, steal company data and secrets, disrupt operations, and tarnish brand reputation. While many companies prioritize revenue-generating investments during harsh economic times, modern cybersecurity systems are necessary to protect revenue, trade secrets, and brand image.
Companies can be most vulnerable to cyberattacks during a Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy. Since GTM strategies are costly, time-consuming, and vital to achieving revenue goals, any disruption to a GTM strategy can be devastating. By understanding the top cyber security threats that affect GTM strategies, you can build up your company’s defenses and protect your investments.
What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?
A Go-to-Market strategy (GTM) is an action plan that outlines how a brand will reach target customers, launch new products or services, implement new strategies or systems, or achieve other business goals.
Companies use GTM strategies to create comprehensive timelines that communicate to stakeholders the step-by-step process, desired outcomes, and how to measure success.
There are numerous benefits to creating GTM strategies:
- Reduces time to market for products and services.
- Outlines plan and responsibilities for internal and external stakeholders
- Improves probability of success
- Mitigates risk for additional costs
- Implements scalable solutions for business growth
- Allows for strategy adaptions
- Ensures positive customer experience
With GTM strategies, brands can create organized systems and structures that reduce operational costs and increase the probability of success.
The Top Cyber Threats Facing GTM Organizations
GTM strategies provide companies with a valuable framework to bring new products, services, systems, and structures to life. While GTM strategies already have inherent risk factors, cyber threats can cause detrimental harm to businesses.
To avoid cybercrimes, companies should understand the various threats they face and how to avoid them.
1. Bots
Bots are a popular tool for many web developers to improve customer experiences. However, cybercriminals can easily create malicious bots to harm your operations.
Cybercriminals will create a network of bots to overwhelm security systems and disrupt digital operations such as websites, servers, payment systems, etc.
GTM strategies are at risk from bot attacks because they generally rely on precision timing and increased operational capacity.
For instance, a business launching a new product may expect 10x the regular web traffic. Bot attacks can cause websites to shut down, payment systems to malfunction, and other technical difficulties. This can diminish the effectiveness of a product launch, negatively impacting ROI and business growth.
To stay prepared, companies should understand the different types of Bot attacks:
Form Bots
Form-filling bots are typically programmed to use stolen customer data to fill out forms and defraud, disrupt, or manipulate companies by providing useless or misleading data.
Account Takeovers
Account takeovers will use bots to access a company’s bank info, payment info, or other information to gain unauthorized access or create fraudulent transactions.
DDoS Attacks
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks use bots to overwhelm websites, servers, and digital systems with fake traffic to shut down servers and cybersecurity systems to gain access to valuable information.
2. Ad Fraud
Ad fraud is another style of attack companies may encounter where cybercriminals use bots and malicious software to gain information, mislead companies, or disrupt operations.
Cybercriminals can use ad fraud tactics to scam companies out of marketing spending and limit operational functionality. These tactics can negatively impact any GTM strategy by wasting company time, money, and other resources.
Companies should understand the types of ad fraud scams to stay vigilant:
Ad Injections
Cybercriminals use Ad injections to replace existing ads with their own through malicious software. These fraudulent ads can carry malicious software, disrupt company websites, or advertise without paying.
Cookie Stuffing
Cookie stuffing is a form of affiliate marketing fraud. Companies will pay out advertisers and other websites that send users to their websites. However, cybercriminals can use cookies to gain commission without the company gaining any real traffic.
Click Spam
Similar to ‘Cookie Stuffing,’ click spam is when a cybercriminal fakes clicks to receive a commission from a company.
3. Client-side Attacks
Client-side attacks are when companies download malicious content that allows hackers access to company systems and data.
Client-side attacks are initiated by users within a company that takes the bait from hackers. The best way to defend against these attacks is to educate employees to watch out for malicious links, downloads, and other harmful software that could initiate a client-side attack.
To protect your operations and GTM strategies from Client-side attacks, companies should be aware of the following tactics:
Web Skimming
Web skimming is when an attacker injects malicious code into a website to gain information from a user. This information is then sent to a server that the hacker controls.
Formjacking
Formjacking is when cybercriminals use malicious code to take over the functionality of a site’s form page to collect information like login credentials, payment info, and more.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS attacks are when hackers inject malicious software into a company’s website to go after customer information. Cybercriminals will target seemingly safe websites that customers where customers wouldn’t expect a hack to occur.
4. Consumer Data Risks
When companies don’t implement the right cybersecurity measures, the risks go beyond lost data and disruptions to GTM strategies.
Customers who suffer from a data leak or scam by using your website will lose trust in your company. Further, by allowing cybercrimes to affect your customers, you can open your business to certain fines and litigation.
Companies should be aware of these risks when creating a GTM strategy:
Brand Reputation
Customers who become victims of fraud and data leaks are less likely to trust that company. The effects on brand reputation can last years and weaken any upcoming GTM strategy.
GDPR Fines
Many governments, like the UK, impose fines on companies for allowing data leaks and cyberattacks to take place. Failing to protect your customers can cost your company up to 4% of its annual revenue or more.
How to Protect Your Revenue with Go-to-Market Security
Investing in cybersecurity systems is the best way to protect your GTM strategy.
Software like CHEQ provides companies with tools and strategies to help reduce risks and let companies focus on their GTM strategy. CHEQ’s GTM security software secures data, scans for bots, ensures user authenticity, and blocks suspicious browsing patterns.
Securing Your Bottom Line
Cybersecurity has never been more critical as companies rely on e-commerce sales and digital capabilities to engage customers and grow their brands. By investing in cybersecurity systems, companies can reduce their exposure to cybercrimes and protect their customers and profit margins.
Companies should take special care in their cybersecurity when launching a GTM strategy. During these times, companies are the most vulnerable to attacks. Using tools like CHEQ’s GTM security software, organizations can ensure the success of any GTM strategy.
Black Friday is a big deal. The retail ‘holiday’ now encompasses nearly an entire week and generates revenue numbers equal to the GDP of a small country. For retailers, the holiday season is often a make-or-break quarter, and a good Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, or Cyber Monday can be key to success.
And while blockbuster deals can still get people out to the brick-and-mortar stores, Black Friday is increasingly an online affair: American consumers spent $8.9 billion online during Black Friday 2021, and $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday and are expected to surpass that in 2022.
But where the money goes, cybercriminals typically follow, and cybercriminals and bad actors have found plenty of ways to take advantage of retailers’ investments in Black Friday through various forms of bots, web scrapers, and fraudulent traffic.
Last year, we discovered that bots and fake users made up 35.7% of all online shoppers on Black Friday. Among the forms of fake traffic we uncovered were malicious scrapers and crawlers, sophisticated botnets, fake accounts, click farms, proxy users, and illegitimate users committing eCommerce-related fraud.
As we approach the 2022 holiday shopping season, we’ve decided to analyze how bots and fake users affected eCommerce sites on previous Black Fridays and used that information alongside current fake traffic rates to uncover the potential financial and operational impacts retailers can expect this coming Black Friday in our new report, How Bots and Fake Users Impact Sales on Black Friday 2022.
To build our report, we analyzed data from 233 million eCommerce site visits originating from all source types (direct, organic, paid) across a 6-month span (January – June 2022) and studied the validity of each site visit. From there, we were able to pull inferences from typical site traffic numbers, consumer spending patterns, and media spending in the eCommerce space.
$368M Could be Lost to Fake Clicks on Retail Ads
Bots and fake users frequently click on advertisements they encounter online, either for purposes of ad fraud, to inflate marketing budgets, or simply to scrape a website for competitive users. This can be done on paid search platforms, advertisements on social media networks, and other forms of display and text ads.
The eCommerce industry is certainly not immune to these actions. Based on the standard rates of fraud that are encountered across retailer websites from paid sources, analyzed alongside the volume and frequency of advertising clicks during the holiday season, CHEQ predicts that retailers will lose about $368 million to fraudulent clicks this Black Friday alone.
Get the Full Story in Our New Report
Invalid traffic is a year-round problem, but Black Friday and the holiday shopping season is a period of increased activity among cybercriminals, and retailers should be prepared to deal with ad fraud, skewed metrics, and cart abandonment.
To learn more about fake traffic and how it can affect eCommerce websites this holiday season, in the full Black Friday report, available here.