By Juan Tejada, EGC’s Paid Media Manager and Jonathan Baker Nobody likes traffic. This is especially true of trouble with online traffic—or to be specific, “invalid traffic.” With assistance from artificial intelligence (AI), Google has taken on a battle against invalid traffic. If you are a brand owner or advertiser, pay very close attention… What is Invalid Traffic? As explained on Google’s “Ads & Commerce” blog, invalid traffic is ad activity that does not come from a real person with genuine interest. Invalid traffic is a major inconvenience to brands and advertisers because it leads to wasted budgets, loss of revenue from publishers, and causes distrust. (In a time when transparency is a high priority, fear of losing trust in advertising is most critical.) A Long-Running Fight Apparently, this battle between the iconic search engine and invalid traffic has been going on for some time. What’s different is a collection of new applications to fight this good fight. What are these applications and how do they work? The Triple-Threat: Google’s Ad Traffic Quality Team, Google Research, Google DeepMind A partnership was formed between Google’s Ad Traffic Quality team, Google Research and Google DeepMind. These three departments have come up with a system that zeroes in on bogus ad placements that create invalid traffic. This system is being carried out by large language models (i.e., the AI component). And so far, the results have been impressive: This update has already led to a 40 percent drop in invalid traffic, making campaigns more efficient. The new system is faster and more accurate, helping protect advertisers’ budgets. Now, advertisers have a more direct and effective reach to their target audiences (instead of policy violators that thrive on invalid traffic. Juan Tejada, Paid Media Manager at EGC, applauds Google’s proactive efforts and the successful results: “It’s good to see Google taking steps to cut down on fake clicks. A 40% drop in invalid traffic means ad budgets are being spent more effectively and results are more reliable for advertisers.” Google Goes Onward and Upward Against Invalid Traffic Google is by no means through with this project. The search engine intends to continue running detailed checks—both automated and manual—to protect advertisers from being charged for invalid traffic. Between the recent updates to Performance Max and efforts to curb invalid traffic, Google indeed has demonstrated its commitment to online advertising. Could your brand’s online presence use an additional boost? Connect with the EGC Group. From website development to social media expertise—and everything in between—we’ll increase the visibility and presence of what your brand had to offer. Find out how.
