What invalid traffic means for you

What invalid traffic is, where you see it in reports, how it relates to advertiser charges and publisher earnings, and how to raise a concern.

Invalid traffic is ad activity that does not come from a real person watching a real screen. LtvAdx classifies it, reports it apart from real delivery, and has rules for what it means for advertiser charges and publisher earnings. This article covers what you can see and what to do. It does not describe how traffic is identified: that is kept confidential so it keeps working.

The rules are in the Invalid Traffic Policy, the Monetisation Policy and the Advertising Policy. The policy wins if this article and it ever differ.

The two kinds

What you see

In every delivery report. Impressions count only traffic that is valid. Invalid traffic is not part of delivery, completion or click figures, so the rates you read are for real delivery.

As a publisher. On Revenue Report, the Invalid Traffic tab lists each day (UTC) with all impressions, how many were GIVT, how many were SIVT, and the invalid percentage. Your inventory details also show a 28-day invalid percentage, and advertisers choosing inventory see that figure on a channel's card. Treat a high figure as a prompt to check your integration and your traffic sources. See Inventory details.

As an advertiser. Your reports show valid traffic only, so a campaign's delivery figures do not include invalid traffic. Reports and the VCR dashboard say so under the headline figures.

As a partner network. Your Overview and Reporting figures also leave invalid traffic out.

Charges and payouts

Invalid traffic is not billed and not paid. There are two moments when LtvAdx can find it:

• When the ad plays. An impression identified as invalid at that moment is never charged: the advertiser's wallet is not debited for it, it does not count against a budget or a frequency cap, the publisher and any data operator earn nothing from it, and a partner network takes no fee on it. It appears only in the invalid traffic figures.
• Later, after review. Some invalid traffic only shows in patterns over a day. Where LtvAdx confirms it within the reconciliation window in the Invalid Traffic Policy, the advertiser gets the spend back as a wallet credit (not cash, unless the law or an order form says otherwise), and the earnings from it are reversed for the publisher and operators. If those earnings were already paid, LtvAdx may offset them against future payouts, and it may hold a payout while it investigates. A credit covers only impressions that were charged, so nothing is credited twice.

The later adjustments are applied by LtvAdx after it has reviewed the traffic, not automatically by the reports. If you believe a charge or an earning includes invalid traffic, raise it and say so with data.

Raise a concern

• As an advertiser, raise a billing dispute in good faith inside the window the Invalid Traffic Policy gives, with supporting data such as a verification vendor's report or a reconciliation upload. LtvAdx's own measurement remains the record used for billing. Where the review finds invalid traffic, the credit and the reversal work exactly as in the table above, and the publisher is told and can appeal.
• To report suspected fraud by someone else, write to trust@ltvadx.com.
• If LtvAdx has acted on your account because of traffic, see Policy cases and appeals.
• For a figure that looks wrong, contact support with the date, the channel or campaign, and the number you expect.

What you should do as a publisher

Keep your app-ads.txt and your server-side stitching registrations accurate, and integrate according to the documentation so that your beacons reflect real playback. Do not generate or buy impressions. The Monetisation Policy sets out what forfeits earnings.

What is not in this article

Thresholds, signals and the methods used to identify invalid traffic are not published, here or in the policy, and LtvAdx staff will not share them.