Quality scores and IVT risk

Two readings of the same data for two different jobs, what each number is built from, and what neither of them claims.

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Traffic quality score, for buyers

Each traffic source gets a score from 0 to 100, where 100 means no bot evidence against it. Confirmed bot traffic costs the full weight and suspected traffic costs half, because a suspected verdict is a score above a threshold rather than a proven crawler identity.

You can rebuild the number by hand from the three counts shown next to it. That is deliberate: a score you cannot explain to an ad network is a score you cannot use.

  • Good is 80 and above, Watch is 50 to 79, and Poor is below 50.
  • The Poor boundary is set at 50 so a source the block list tells you to cut cannot read as Watch on the screen above it.
  • A source with fewer than 30 events is left unscored rather than given a number we cannot stand behind.
  • The trend compares the first half of the range against the second, not day against day, because a single day swings on volume alone.

Invalid traffic risk, for publishers

Publishers running ads face a different risk from buyers. A buyer who ignores bot traffic wastes budget. A publisher can lose the ad account that funds the site.

The risk level is set by the SIVT share, meaning sophisticated invalid traffic: automation pretending to be a person, and crawlers impersonating a search engine. GIVT, meaning declared bots such as search crawlers and monitoring, is reported separately and deliberately does not raise the level. Every site on the internet has GIVT and exchanges filter it themselves.

The trend matters more than the level. By the time the level is bad, the conversation with your network has already started. A site sitting inside the low band whose SIVT share tripled this week is warned about it now.

What these numbers do not claim

No ad network publishes the threshold at which it acts, so the risk reading cannot predict enforcement and does not try to. The thresholds are ours, they are printed on the screen next to the reading, and what the number reports is what our detection found on your traffic.

Below 200 pageviews in the range, a site is left ungraded rather than called low risk. Reassuring a quiet site on the strength of a few dozen pageviews is the one thing that screen must never do.