Pixalate is an MRC-accredited company for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic ("SIVT") desktop and mobile web impressions.
According to the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) standards for Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines, there are two types of invalid traffic:
One example of GIVT is “known data-center traffic.”
Known data-center traffic is any traffic that has been detected by IP Address to originate in a data-center. If it has originated in a data-center, it is therefore very likely to have come from a server rather than a laptop, smartphone, tablet or other device.
Exceptions include servers known to be acting as a legitimate access point for users, e.g. a corporate gateway.
The MRC notes that known data-center traffic is “determined to be a consistent source of non-human traffic; not including routing artifacts of legitimate users or virtual machine legitimate browsing.”
Data-center traffic can lead to exceptionally high programmatic ad fraud impression rates. For example, in our Q1 2017 Programmatic Impression Ad Fraud Benchmarks Report, we note that Japan (81%) had extremely high levels of programmatic impression fraud in the desktop space. Not coincidentally, Japan is one of the world’s largest homes to high-volume data-centers.
MRC-accredited ad fraud detection and prevention companies must be able to identify and filter known data-center traffic.
Known data-center traffic is just one example of General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) as defined by the MRC. To learn about some of the other examples of GIVT, click on any of the examples below:
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Disclaimer: The content of this page reflects Pixalate’s opinions with respect to the factors that Pixalate believes can be useful to the digital media industry. Any proprietary data shared is grounded in Pixalate’s proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources should not be construed as endorsements. Pixalate’s opinions are just that - opinion, not facts or guarantees.
Per the MRC, “'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes. Also per the MRC, “‘Invalid Traffic’ is defined generally as traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic (spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent traffic.”