Glossary

Media buying and invalid traffic, defined

The words you meet buying native, push and pop traffic, and the ones for what goes wrong with it. Network-specific details, such as which unit each network lets you block, are on the network pages.

Ad formats

Popunder: A full-page ad that opens in a new window or tab behind the page the visitor is on, usually triggered by a click anywhere on the publisher’s page. The visitor sees it when they close or switch tabs. Sold per thousand views (CPM) or per view (CPV). Pop networks →
Onclick: A network’s name for popunder or tabunder inventory fired by a click on the publisher’s page. Because the visitor did not choose the ad, a quick exit is normal and does not by itself mean the visit was invalid.
Tabunder: A popunder that opens the advertiser’s page as a new browser tab rather than a window, behind the tab the visitor is on. Behaves like a popunder for measurement purposes.
Push notification ad: An ad delivered as a browser notification to people who subscribed to notifications on some website. The click lands on the advertiser’s page. Quality depends heavily on how the subscriber list was built. Push networks →
In-page push: An ad styled like a push notification but rendered inside the publisher’s page, so it needs no subscription and works on browsers that block notifications. Usually bought per click.
Native ad: An ad designed to match the look of the editorial content around it, typically a headline and thumbnail inside a recommendation widget below an article. Native networks →
Content recommendation widget: The block of “recommended for you” links at the foot of an article, where native networks such as Taboola, Outbrain and MGID place ads. Each widget has its own ID, which is often the unit you can block.
Smartlink: A single tracking link that a network or affiliate platform routes to different offers depending on the visitor’s country, device and other targeting, so one link can be bought across mixed traffic.

Inventory units

Zone ID: The identifier of one ad placement on one publisher site, used by push and pop networks. It is the most precise unit most of those networks let you block, bid on or whitelist. Blocking by network →
Subzone: A finer split of a zone that some networks (PropellerAds is the best known) expose for targeting and exclusion, so one bad slice of a zone can be cut without dropping the rest. Blacklisting zones in PropellerAds →
Site ID: The identifier of the publisher website that showed the ad. On native networks it is usually the main blockable unit; on push and pop networks it groups several zones.
Publisher ID: The identifier of the account that sells the inventory, which can own many sites. Blocking by publisher removes all of them at once.
Widget ID: The identifier of one recommendation widget on one publisher page, used by native networks such as MGID and Revcontent. Blocking a widget keeps the rest of the site. Blocking widgets in MGID →
Placement: The general term for where an ad ran: a site, app, zone, widget or slot. Search and social platforms use it for the sites and apps in their partner networks.
Source / feed: On networks that aggregate supply from partners, the upstream supplier the traffic came through. Blocking a source removes every site behind it, which is coarse but sometimes the only option.
Sub-ID: A free-form parameter a network or affiliate passes on each click to identify the traffic’s origin in more detail than the campaign. Its meaning depends on who fills it.
RON (run of network): A campaign that buys across all of a network’s inventory that matches the targeting, with no site or zone list. Cheap and broad; the traffic mix, including invalid traffic, is whatever the network has.

Tracking

Tracking macro (token): A placeholder in your ad URL, such as {zoneid} or {site_id}, that the network replaces with the real value on each click. Macros are how you learn which sub-source sent a visit. Tracking tokens by network →
Click ID: A unique value a network writes into the landing URL for each click, so the click can be matched to a conversion later. Some platforms add it automatically.
Postback (server-to-server): A call from your server or tracker to the network’s server that reports a conversion for a given click ID, without relying on a browser pixel.
UTM parameters: Standard query parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and others) that label where a visit came from. They name the campaign but rarely the zone or site behind it.
Tracker: Software such as Voluum, RedTrack or Binom that sits between the ad and the landing page to count clicks, route traffic and attribute conversions to sources.

Buying and optimization

Blacklist (block list): A list of zones, sites, widgets or publishers a campaign must not buy. The standard way to act on a bad source once you know which one it is. Blocking by network →
Whitelist (allow list): A list of the only zones, sites or publishers a campaign may buy. Safer than a blacklist once you know which sources work, but it limits volume.
Bid per zone: Setting a different bid for individual zones or sites instead of one campaign bid, so weak sources get less money rather than none.
Rule-based optimization: Automatic rules in a network’s dashboard that pause or block sources when a metric, such as spend without a conversion, crosses a threshold.
CPM, CPC, CPV, CPA: Cost per thousand impressions, per click, per view and per action (conversion). Pop is usually CPM or CPV, push and native usually CPC.
Frequency cap: The maximum number of times one visitor is shown your ad in a period. A low cap limits how much one device, human or not, can cost you.

Invalid traffic

Invalid traffic (IVT): Clicks and visits that should not be counted or paid for: bots, automated tools, accidental and duplicate clicks, and traffic from fraud schemes. Invalid traffic, defined →
GIVT (general invalid traffic): Invalid traffic that simple, list-based filtering catches: known crawlers, data-center traffic, declared bots.
SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic): Invalid traffic built to look human, which takes deeper analysis to find: automated browsers imitating people, hijacked devices, traffic laundered through residential connections.
Bot traffic: Visits made by software rather than people. Some bots are harmless and declared; the ones that click ads while pretending to be human are invalid traffic. Bot traffic, detected →
Click farm: People or rooms of devices paid to click ads or complete actions. The visits are human but have no interest in the offer.
Incentivized traffic: Visitors who were rewarded for clicking, for example with points or content. Not always fraud, but rarely worth what you pay for it unless the offer allows it.
Traffic arbitrage: Buying cheap traffic to a page and reselling the visitors’ attention through ads on that page. Arbitrage sites are a common source of low-quality native and pop inventory.
Made-for-advertising (MFA) site: A site built mainly to show ads, usually filled with paid traffic, with little content anyone came for.
Domain spoofing: Misrepresenting the site an ad ran on, so inventory from a low-quality site is sold under a better site’s name.
Ad stacking and pixel stuffing: Showing several ads on top of each other, or an ad in a 1×1 pixel frame, so impressions are counted that nobody could see.
Invalid rate: The share of visits from a source that are judged invalid. Compared across zones, sites or widgets, it shows which ones to cut first.
Verdict (Valid or Invalid): ValidVisit’s judgment on a single visit: Valid, or Invalid with its evidence — a hosting or VPN address, automation, a browser contradicting its own claims. How ValidVisit works →

deal-alerts.example13K71% invalid

zone 44716.1K23% invalid

premium-news.example4.7K2% invalid

Find the zones and sites sending bots.

ValidVisit judges every visit Valid or Invalid and ranks each network’s sources worst first.

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