NativeWhich Outbrain publishers send bot traffic?
Pinpoint which Outbrain publishers and sections inflate click counts. ValidVisit judges every visit and surfaces sub-sources for manual exclusion.
publisher / section in OutbrainThe buyer checks the bad publishers/sections in the campaign’s By Publisher/By Section report and applies Actions → Exclude (temporary for 7, 14, 21 or 30 days or a custom length, or permanent), or bulk-uploads a CSV of section IDs via the Import → Excludes option (CSV exclusions are permanent). Outbrain allows up to 30 blocked publishers and 100 blocked sections per campaign.
How bot traffic slips in through Outbrain publishers.
Outbrain places your ads as content recommendations on its network of publisher sites, and charges for each click at the CPC you set. Outbrain records a click any time a user clicks a recommendation on a publisher site, so the click count alone says nothing about who clicked. Outbrain’s dynamic macros pass {{publisher_id}}, {{section_id}} and {{ob_click_id}} on every click, so each visit’s verdict is tied to the publisher and section that sent it and to a single click, rather than averaged across the campaign.
Outbrain’s publisher guidelines require media owners to keep all traffic sources legitimate and human-driven, and to prevent invalid activity: clicks, impressions or conversions that are not generated by a legitimate human or that artificially inflate advertisers’ costs. They also bar traffic acquisition that generates bot traffic, incentivized clicks or forced visits. Those are rules for publishers; what reaches your landing page still has to be judged visit by visit.
Where the Invalid verdicts sit tells you what to do. Invalid verdicts that pile up on a small handful of {{publisher_id}} values, rather than spreading across the campaign, point to those publishers. Invalid verdicts on one {{ad_id}} across many publishers point somewhere else: the ad rather than a source. Within a publisher, {{section_id}} narrows it further, and Outbrain itself recommends blocking by section per campaign first and blocking a publisher at account level only as a last resort.
What to watch on Outbrain
Sort your ValidVisit dashboard by {{publisher_id}} and compare each publisher’s click volume with its share of invalid visits. A publisher generating a disproportionate slice of clicks while running an invalid share well above your campaign baseline is the first candidate for exclusion in the campaign’s By Publisher view.
Cross-reference Invalid verdicts against {{ad_id}}, the ad token, as well as publisher ID. When one ad is judged invalid consistently across many publisher IDs, the problem is more likely tied to that ad than to a single publisher, and excluding publishers one by one won’t fix it.
A section is a category page within a publisher’s site, and {{section_id}} shows which one the Invalid verdicts come from. Outbrain lets you block up to 30 publishers and 100 sections per campaign, so spend those slots on the units that combine a high invalid share with real volume.
Outbrain notes that publisher traffic can spike around breaking news or viral events and bring clicks that don’t convert, which is what its temporary exclusions are for. A publisher or section whose invalid share stays high from one reporting period to the next is a candidate for a permanent exclusion.
What Outbrain lets you judge by.
Invalid share broken down by:
- Publisher ID
{{publisher_id}}
Invalid share broken down by:
- Section ID
{{section_id}}The section inside a publisher; Outbrain advises excluding sections before whole publishers.
Per-click id: Outbrain passes a unique click id, and ValidVisit stores it with each visit, so a verdict traces back to the click in Outbrain’s own reports.
Compare bot & invalid-traffic breakdown across every ad network →See your own Outbrain sub-sources judged this way.
How ValidVisit attributes Outbrain traffic
Each Outbrain macro maps to a normalized parameter, so every judged visit is pinned to the right campaign, creative and publisher.
https://yoursite.com/landing?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=native&vv_campaign_id={{campaign_id}}&vv_ad_id={{ad_id}}&vv_publisher_id={{publisher_id}}&vv_click_id={{ob_click_id}}&vv_placement_id={{section_id}}| Token | Outbrain macro | Maps to | Identifies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign ID | {{campaign_id}} | campaign_id | campaign |
| Ad ID | {{ad_id}} | ad_id | ad |
| Publisher ID | {{publisher_id}} | publisher_id | publisher |
| Click ID | {{ob_click_id}} | click_id | click |
| Section ID | {{section_id}} | placement_id | placement |
- Outbrain macro
{{campaign_id}}- Maps to
- campaign_id
- Identifies
- campaign
- Outbrain macro
{{ad_id}}- Maps to
- ad_id
- Identifies
- ad
- Outbrain macro
{{publisher_id}}- Maps to
- publisher_id
- Identifies
- publisher
- Outbrain macro
{{ob_click_id}}- Maps to
- click_id
- Identifies
- click
- Outbrain macro
{{section_id}}- Maps to
- placement_id
- Identifies
- placement
Macros checked against Outbrain’s own documentation on 2026-10-02. Outbrain docs
The verdict works the same way on every network. ValidVisit never changes your Outbrain account: you make the exclusion there yourself. How the verdict works →
Outbrain traffic quality, answered.
Which Outbrain macros do I add to my tracking code, and what does each one tell me about click quality?
Four are worth including. {{publisher_id}} identifies the source publisher and is the most actionable dimension, because publishers are what Outbrain lets you exclude. {{ob_click_id}} is the unique per-click identifier ValidVisit uses to tie its verdict to a single Outbrain click. {{campaign_id}} and {{ad_id}} segment verdicts by campaign and ad, so you can tell an ad problem from a publisher problem. Add {{section_id}} if you plan to exclude by section. All of them go in the Tracking section of the campaign settings rather than on the ad’s URL: Outbrain appends that tracking code to every ad in the campaign and does not support dynamic parameters at URL level.
Outbrain already sets traffic quality rules for its publishers. What does ValidVisit add on top of that?
Outbrain’s guidelines oblige publishers to keep traffic human-driven and to prevent invalid activity across the network. ValidVisit is scoped to your campaign: each visit to your landing page gets a verdict attributed to the publisher ID, ad and click ID that sent it. The result is a per-visit log of which sub-sources send invalid visits to your offer, in a form you can act on directly.
Can I exclude an Outbrain publisher temporarily?
Yes. In the campaign’s By Publisher or By Section view, use the Exclude toggle on a row, or check several rows and choose Actions → Exclude. A temporary exclusion runs for 7, 14, 21 or 30 days or a custom length (21 is the default) and the inventory comes back by itself when it expires; a permanent one stays until you change it. Publishers can also be entered in the campaign settings’ "Exclude Publishers and Sections" box, and sections uploaded in bulk as a CSV of section IDs via Import → Excludes. CSV exclusions are permanent.
Can I block IP addresses in Outbrain?
No. Outbrain’s guide to its targeting options lists no IP exclusion, so the lever is the publisher or section. It does list targeting by platform (desktop, smartphone, tablet), operating system, browser and location, a WiFi-only option for mobile devices, and a campaign language setting.
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