Skip to navigation
Analytics

Click fraud protection

Detect invalid clicks in your campaigns, block the sources before you pay for them, and see which publishers and sellers they come from.

Click fraud is any click on an ad that doesn’t come from a real person with genuine interest: bots, scripts, click farms, infected devices, or integration problems that count the same click more than once. If you pay per click, or optimize toward clicks, every invalid click costs you money and skews your results.

Pixalate measures clicks as well as impressions. It applies its impression invalid traffic (IVT) signals to clicks, and adds click-specific detection on top, so you can see click fraud by type, publisher, app, seller and campaign.

What Pixalate detects

Every invalid click is classified into an IVT type from IVT Taxonomy 2.0. The click-specific types are:

IVT Taxonomy 2.0 typeCodeWhat it means
Click Farms2301Traffic from IPs where a statistically inflated number of devices generate coordinated clicks.
Infected Device Clicks2302Clicks generated by one device at a statistically inflated rate.
Fraudulent Clicks1108Clicks recorded too soon after their impression for a person to have reacted.
Repeat Click Transactions1102Clicks with the same ID and attributes generated multiple times; usually an integration issue.

Clicks are also checked against every other IVT type, such as Data Center Traffic (1301), automated browsing and proxy traffic. In Analytics reports you’ll also see High CTR Traffic, which flags creatives whose click-through rate is anomalous for a publisher. See Click tracking for the names each type has in your reports.

Three ways to act on it

Measure it in Analytics

Add the Pixalate click tag next to your impression tag. Your reports then show gross, GIVT and SIVT clicks by IVT type, publisher, app, seller and campaign.

Block it in real time

Check the IP address, device ID or user agent with the Fraud API before you serve, count or pay for a click. You set your own blocking threshold.

Block it pre-bid with data feeds

Load Pixalate’s lists of invalid IPs, device IDs, data centers and user agents into your platform, so flagged traffic never gets a chance to click.

Get started

  1. Measure first. Set up click tracking alongside your impression tag. If you sample traffic, sample impressions and clicks at the same rate, or the click-through rate Pixalate sees will be wrong.
  2. Find the sources. In Analytics, add the Fraud Type dimension, then break invalid clicks down by publisher, app or seller. See Run and customize reports.
  3. Block them. Use the Fraud API at click or serve time, the IP block lists, mobile and CTV device ID feeds, and the data center feed pre-bid.
  4. Recover spend. Use the clawback report to document invalid traffic for refund discussions with your partners.

Questions? Email support@pixalate.com.