How to block widgets in MGID

MGID places your teasers inside content-recommendation widgets on independent publisher sites, and bills on the click. Some site owners buy cheap traffic to inflate the pageviews their widget impressions are counted on, then collect CPCs when those visitors, or automation standing in for them, click. That cost can build up across dozens of widgets before engagement metrics make the pattern visible.

The widget is also what MGID lets you exclude, so you can drop one bad placement without judging a whole publisher by it. ValidVisit judges every paid visit Valid or Invalid on your landing page, with its evidence, and pins each verdict to the widget that sent it. The exclusion itself is yours to make in MGID.

MGID fills dynamic values into your destination URL on every click. Pass these:

• {widget_id} as vv_publisher_id: the widget, and the ID you’ll block.
• {click_id} as vv_click_id: required. Ties a judged visit to one MGID click.
• {campaign_id} as vv_campaign_id: required. Separates campaigns when the same widget appears in campaigns with different targeting.
• {teaser_id} as vv_creative_id: the creative. Useful, but lower priority here: invalid traffic lives in the publisher layer rather than in which teaser was shown.

The MGID tracking tokens page lists each macro with its ValidVisit parameter.

After a few days of judged visits, ValidVisit ranks widgets worst first (what that looks like on MGID). Two patterns deserve a close look:

• Concentration. A healthy campaign spreads clicks across many widgets. A few widget IDs taking a disproportionate share of clicks while carrying an invalid share above your campaign’s are the first candidates.
• New widgets that start loud. A widget ID that appears for the first time and immediately out-clicks your established placements, especially outside the target geography’s peak hours, is worth checking before it compounds.

Automated click sweeps tend to hit one widget in bursts rather than spread across the placement mix, which is why the widget view catches them when the campaign average doesn’t.

MGID gives you two manual routes:

1. A handful of widgets. In the MGID Ads dashboard, open the campaign’s Widget optimization tab, check the offending widget UIDs and click the pause/stop icon.
2. A longer list. Bulk-upload a CSV of UIDs via Import → Widget Blocklist, up to 1,000 widgets per import.

ValidVisit’s Cut-list exports the flagged widgets as a paste-ready CSV, which suits the import route. A list longer than 1,000 has to go in more than one import, so put the worst widgets in the first file.

MGID’s Rules-Based Optimization can auto-block widgets that breach rules you define. Those rules act on MGID’s own metrics, not on ValidVisit verdicts, so they catch widgets that underperform by MGID’s numbers and miss widgets that look fine there but send visits that aren’t real.

A workable split: let rules handle spend and conversion thresholds, and use the ValidVisit ranking for the rest. Start the manual list with the widgets carrying the most invalid visits (share times volume); a widget with one bad hour on a few dozen visits can wait for more data.

Other controls help at the edges. MGID supports IP exclusion and targeting by OS and OS version, browser (not browser version), language, device and connection type.

MGID’s advertiser terms have no invalid-traffic credit clause. Two things are available:

• Disputes. You can dispute charges in writing within 30 calendar days of receiving the Final Report. The notice has to identify the disputed portion of the report and come with adequate supporting evidence; MGID answers within 30 days. A report you don’t dispute counts as accepted, and the Final Report is the conclusive basis for fees.
• Balance refunds. Unspent funds are refundable at any time via your personal manager. Spent funds aren’t.

Per-widget verdicts are the supporting evidence: widget ID, dates, visit count and the share judged invalid. MGID also runs third-party verification with Pixalate alongside its own fraud protection. The refunds-by-network comparison shows how that compares.

Keep measuring after the cut and compare the same campaign over windows of equal length before and after. The invalid share should drop. If it doesn’t, check whether new widget IDs have picked up the volume; they are where the next list starts. The same judge, rank and cut loop for other networks is in blocking bad sources by network, and terms like widget and sub-source are in the glossary.