Traffic Woes: The Cost Of Invalid Traffic On Advertising Campaign Performance

Whether it’s from bots or from scrapes, from clicks that were accidental, or from clicks of whatever other ingenuine intent, invalid traffic has a cost.

In fact, according to The Global Invalid Traffic Report 2026 from Lunio, at the average IVT rate of 8.51%, that cost was as much as $63 billion last year, a number expected only to increase with “the rise of AI agents and more sophisticated bot traffic.”

“[Ad platforms] tend to catch the easy stuff: duplicate clicks, basic bot patterns, and clear publisher malpractice,” says the report, which analyzed a year’s worth of data, including 2.7 billion clicks. “Sophisticated invalid traffic and coordinated schemes still slip through at scale, with these interactions reaching your site, completing forms, triggering marketing automation, and distorting your understanding of campaign performance.”

TikTok was found to have a 24.2% average IVT rate, more than other platforms due to its “less mature anti-fraud systems [which] clearly make it more vulnerable to bot farms, automation tools, and affiliate arbitrage networks that inflate engagement artificially.” LinkedIn had a near-20% average IVT, followed by Twitter (12.79%), Bing (10.32%), and Meta (8.2%).

(Source: Lunio)

“Google’s lower average IVT rate (7.57%) stems from years of public pressure and litigation forcing the company to invest heavily in detection systems,” says the report, which, in breaking down by Google’s campaign types, found the largest IVT rates in Google Video Partners (20.62%) and Display (12%). Search only saw a 5.21% IVT rate, but as Lunio says, losses even at that level can be “substantial.”

“With an annual spend of $3M on Google paid search, our data indicates that more than $156,000 will be lost to invalid clicks alone,” says the report, giving a hypothetical of what a larger-budgeted enterprise business might experience. “And the losses stack up further when you consider the lost revenue opportunity had those fake clicks converted at normal rates.”

So, how has invalid traffic affected your advertising campaigns and overall business?