Which PopAds websites send bot traffic?
ValidVisit judges every PopAds visit by publisher ID and category, so you can cut bot-heavy zones before they distort your conversion data.
website in PopAdsThe buyer pastes the bad PopAds website IDs (one per line) into the campaign’s Website Targeting box in Exclude mode, or saves them as a pre-defined Website Targeting list and attaches it to campaigns.
How bot traffic slips in through PopAds websites.
Pop-under traffic works unlike any other paid channel: the ad opens the moment a publisher page loads, with no click, no user intent and no intervening ad unit. That makes PopAds useful for volume-oriented campaigns, and it concentrates one kind of invalid traffic: automated page-loaders that trigger the pop-under and vanish. Passing [WEBSITEID] and [CATEGORYID] gives a publisher-level and category-level breakdown of which pockets of the network send real people and which pad your counts with software-generated loads.
Because a pop fires without a user gesture, the dominant pattern on pop-under channels is automated browser cycling rather than the click injection more common on CPC formats: a throwaway browser loads a publisher page, the pop fires, and the visit ends within a second or two. Visits that come and go that fast, concentrated on specific [WEBSITEID] values, are one of the clearest publisher-quality tells on pop inventory.
Category mismatch is a second pattern. A publisher site categorized under a high-CPM vertical may have negligible real audience in that niche, with the label there mainly to reach better-paying campaigns. When a [CATEGORYID] delivers volume that is judged invalid across several [WEBSITEID] values underneath it, the category label itself is worth acting on, even if conversion numbers from that bucket look superficially plausible.
What to watch on PopAds
[WEBSITEID]) invalid shareSort your ValidVisit report by WEBSITEID and look for publishers whose share of invalid visits is disproportionately high against your campaign-wide baseline. A handful of website IDs often account for most invalid visits; excluding them in the campaign’s Website Targeting is typically the highest-leverage action available.
[CATEGORYID]) vs. actual audience signalIf a CATEGORYID delivers strong raw volume but the visits underneath it are consistently judged invalid, the category’s audience has been inflated. The CATEGORYID dimension isolates problem categories without discarding well-performing ones in the same campaign.
Automated systems run unattended around the clock. A publisher whose invalid share climbs sharply overnight, well above your campaign baseline for those hours, is a candidate for dayparting or deeper review rather than blanket removal, since it may deliver legitimate traffic during active hours.
What PopAds lets you judge by.
Invalid share broken down by:
- Website ID
[WEBSITEID]ID of the publisher website/source that triggered the popunder.
Invalid share broken down by:
- Category ID
[CATEGORYID]ID of the category of the traffic-source website (used to segment/target placements).
Per-click id: PopAds passes a unique click id, and ValidVisit stores it with each visit, so a verdict traces back to the click in PopAds’s own reports.
Compare bot & invalid-traffic breakdown across every ad network →See your own PopAds sub-sources judged this way.
How ValidVisit attributes PopAds traffic
Each PopAds 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=popads&utm_medium=pop&vv_campaign_id=[CAMPAIGNID]&vv_click_id=[IMPRESSIONID]&vv_campaign_name=[CAMPAIGNNAME]&vv_publisher_id=[WEBSITEID]&vv_placement_id=[CATEGORYID]&vv_keyword=[KEYWORD]| Token | PopAds macro | Maps to | Identifies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign ID | [CAMPAIGNID] | campaign_id | campaign |
| Impression ID (Click ID / External ID) | [IMPRESSIONID] | click_id | click |
| Campaign Name | [CAMPAIGNNAME] | campaign_name | campaign |
| Website ID | [WEBSITEID] | publisher_id | publisher |
| Category ID | [CATEGORYID] | placement_id | placement |
| Keyword | [KEYWORD] | keyword | keyword |
- PopAds macro
[CAMPAIGNID]- Maps to
- campaign_id
- Identifies
- campaign
- PopAds macro
[IMPRESSIONID]- Maps to
- click_id
- Identifies
- click
- PopAds macro
[CAMPAIGNNAME]- Maps to
- campaign_name
- Identifies
- campaign
- PopAds macro
[WEBSITEID]- Maps to
- publisher_id
- Identifies
- publisher
- PopAds macro
[CATEGORYID]- Maps to
- placement_id
- Identifies
- placement
- PopAds macro
[KEYWORD]- Maps to
- keyword
- Identifies
- keyword
Macros not yet checked against PopAds’s documentation. PopAds docs
The verdict works the same way on every network. ValidVisit never changes your PopAds account: you make the exclusion there yourself. How the verdict works →
PopAds traffic quality, answered.
How do I exclude a website in PopAds?
In the campaign form’s Website Targeting section, set the mode to Exclude and paste the website IDs, one per line. To reuse the same exclusions across campaigns, save them as a list in the Website Targeting List Manager and attach it. Rank [WEBSITEID] values by their share of invalid visits first, so the list starts with the publishers doing the most damage.
Which PopAds macros should I pass, and why do they matter for pop-specific analysis?
The most diagnostic dimensions for pop-under IVT are [WEBSITEID] (the publisher domain serving the pop) and [CATEGORYID] (the content category the publisher registered under). Append both to your landing page URL — for example ?ppsite=[WEBSITEID]&ppcat=[CATEGORYID] — and ValidVisit stores them alongside every visit verdict. You can also pass [CAMPAIGNID] and [IMPRESSIONID] for deduplication and campaign-level segmentation. Because pop impressions carry no user-chosen click, [WEBSITEID] is the primary handle for isolating bot-heavy supply; [KEYWORD] and [CAMPAIGNNAME] help filter your report view but rarely separate IVT patterns on their own.
PopAds has its own filtering layer. What does ValidVisit add that the network does not already provide?
PopAds’ quality controls are set network-wide, not for your offer, geo or funnel. A visit that clears them can still be judged invalid on your landing page, and a [WEBSITEID]-level invalid share shows which publishers are dragging your optimization data, so exclusions rest on what those publishers do to your funnel rather than on network averages.
Can I exclude IP addresses in PopAds?
Yes. PopAds also targets by OS and OS version, browser and browser version, language, device and connection type.
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Find the bots in your PopAds spend.
See which publishers and placements send real buyers vs bots — every visit judged Valid or Invalid, worst first.
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