A remarkable 61% of US web activity was deemed suspicious during Q4 2013, solidly passing the majority threshold it first attained a quarter earlier. In fact, Solve Media’s latest quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory, the share of web traffic suspected of being fraudulent increased by 38.6% during the course of the year, even despite a small dip during Q2. And while levels of suspicious mobile activity slipped in Q4, they finished the year significantly higher than they started it.
In Q4, one-quarter of US mobile traffic was suspicious, down slightly from 27% in Q3, but up more than 30% from 19% share during Q1.
While the levels of suspicious web activity have reached new heights in the US, the problem is more acute in other regions of the world, such as Southeast Asia, China, and Eastern Europe. Within those regions, Singapore, Taiwan Poland, Lithuania and Romania are identified as having the highest levels of bot traffic.
Earlier this year, Solve Media reported – by way of a Q4 survey of 600 digital media buyers, senior marketers and online publishers – that 59% of agencies see bot traffic’s harmful effects on campaign performance. That same study estimated that up to $11.6 billion in global display spending could be wasted this year advertising to bots.
About the Data: Solve Media currently reviews a quarterly average of over 700 million human verifications across more than 8,400 global publishers.
