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PopAds Bots? (16)

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Is it just me or is Popads infested with bot traffic? I've copied over campaigns from Popcash and after spending through my budgets on there, I get 0 clicks to my offer. After checking my server logs, I see the traffic coming in but the images/etc aren't being loaded up. A friend is reporting the same thing..

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That's why I do a bot test on every new GEO I test on PopAds

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I did not notice this. What GEO?

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How do you do a "Bot test"?

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Popads is known to sent bot traffic to banned accounts. Eg, they dont ban you right away, but sent bot traffic for a while to make you pay.

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Here's caurmen's post on How To Find Bot Traffic

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It's an old account, so that might be possible. I'll email them, otherwise Paypal disputes are in order...

This is for US.

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Realy zero conversions with popads, i received 850 clicks in hot optimized offer, i think popads useless

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Here's what I'm doing for BOT traffic coming
When BOT traffic comes, I simply redirect all BOT to ex www.site.com

And in that site, I have ads in it like popads, popcash ads...
So that way I could focus in real human stats instead of mixed traffic
Hope that helps you

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Is this true?? Thats pretty effed.

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Hi Guys, just wanted to point out to various issues with PopAds traffic quality, most of them should be related to bots.
I could not find proper answer for those problems on STM, so I decided to post them in this thread.

I started working with PopAds traffic source since 13/01/2017 and since then had various problems with traffic quality.
It seems there is a *huge* amount of bot traffic in PopAds platform.
I tried the below scenarios and got the corresponding results:
1) I bought circa $20 worth of traffic in each geo - TR and MX - using different traffic quality settings:
Budget: Above average
Traffic quality: 3+ and 5+
Connection types: All
Connection speeds: All
ISPs: All
Used the PopAds placements blacklist provided by @Mr Green (available on STM forum).

I ran multiple tests using different traffic quality settings - 3+ and 5+
Result: In all cases in Voluum the number of clicks exceeded the number of visits! Total CTR of campaign exceeded 100% (e.g. 175%, etc).
Some placements yielded the CTR of 1000+%!

2) Next day I ran the bot detection test as was suggested by @Caurmen in another thread.
I used the traffic quality 3+ and 5+ again.
Result: The CTR of different placements varied from 10% to 100%, in average = 60-70%, i.e. the percentage of human traffic was well below 100%!

3) On next day (18/01/2017) I tried to run the same test in TR/MX geos using traffic quality 7+ but WITHOUT the placement blacklist (as it was suggested by @Vortex in couple of other threads).
Suddenly I have got completely different picture:
Number of clicks was much less than visits, the average CTR was around 1.5-2.5%! There were no extra clicks anywhere in any placements.
Just to note: all the landers I used for these test were non-aggressive, so that should correlate with quite decent CTR value.

4) Today I ran few more tests in TR geo using the traffic quality 5+ and 7+ and used 3 different offer URLs in Voluum campaign, without the blacklist:
- ClickDealer - Turkey [TR] offer, traffic quality 5+:
Result: Very nice result - 449 visits/9 clicks, CTR=2%.
- Adsimilis - Flow 3G [TR] offer, traffic quality 5+:
Result: suddenly I've got too many clicks and CTR exceeded 100%!
- Then I changed the traffic quality to 7+ in order to try to improve traffic quality and see if this would eliminate bot traffic:
Result: the same problem - too many clicks and CTR exceeded 100% even with traffic quality 7+!
Total result: 747 visits/1315 clicks, CTR=176%
- Changed to different Adsimilis offer:
Adsimilis - Turkey - Click Flow, traffic quality 7+:
Result: 174 visits, 200 clicks, CTR=114.94%

See the attached screenshot:


Worth to note: the last 3 test runs I have done with low total balance in PopAds ($2-3 left literally).

Questions:
- Are the extra clicks I have seen in my tests related to bot traffic (when CTR would normally exceed 100%)?
- Why PopAds behaves so differently and could provide good and very bad (bot) traffic under the same conditions?
Is that somehow related to the expenditure patterns/total balance left?
- Is there a correlation between the traffic quality (3+, 4+, etc.) and the chance of getting the bot traffic from PopAds?
- Should we always use the traffic quality of 7+ or 5+ to avoid bot traffic?

P.S.
I have sent the same questions to PopAds support and am waiting for their response.

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The extra clicks... You sure you don't have some backbutton script or auto-redirect going on @ your landers? Or possibly window.opener (which would get your popads acc banned which may explain bot traffic). Try drill down by OS / category, or siteID. Also check how 3G/4G does vs WiFi. There aren't very many bots using carrier traffic.

Some site owners pump out bot traffic and mix it with good traffic to maximize profit, and get away with it because their real traffic is good...

I usually do 3+, lately popads haven't given me as many convs as usual but there are so many GEOs, for some geos popads have been the best source by far.
For correlation between traffic quality and bots it seems there is none from what you say. PopAds has been one of the few sources I have never bothered to do bot tests because CTR there has always been lower compared to other sources, but CVR has been good.

Please post your response from PopAds support when you get it thoughFor correlation between traffic quality and bots it seems there is none from what you say. PopAds has been one of the few sources I have never bothered to do bot tests because CTR there has always been lower compared to other sources, but CVR has been good.

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This is true. We had our account banned a while back and tried to reopen twice and both times after a short while we stopped receiving any human traffic (0 clicks), however visits were still going up and account balance was decreasing. We could still log into the platform and submit campaigns etc.

For anyone trying to open up a new popads account, dont use a public VPN (such as hma) to access your new account. Set up a proper proxy and a virtual machine and obviously change your contact details and campaign URLs.

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Good point about the various scripts present in the lander. I once had such experience that for some new landers the CTR was 200%+ and that was only with those new landers.

On a few bot tests run on POP Ads I've had results like 60-70% human traffic besides some certain websites that no matter what, they'll just consume your budget! And one thing to note is the Avarage Bid when Carrier Only. In MX carrier only traffic cost can be 3-5 times more expensive than mixed one and good traffic quality should be the reason behind it.

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Regarding the scripts bloating up the CTR - you should always get a more realistic CTR from IOS devices as many scripts dont work on them.

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@ysekse - I checked with PopAds support and fortunately my account has not been banned at all.
The support person suggested that there is a technical problem (code issue) on landing pages (not an infrastructure problem).
I have looked into the landers again, ran some tests with traffic quality 3+ and *finally* discovered that BackButton javascript indeed caused those extra clicks!!

This global Javascript function is causing problem (part of Back Fix script functionality):
<script type="text/javascript">
!function () {
var t;
try {
for (t = 0; 10 > t; ++t) history.pushState({}, "", "#");
onpopstate = function (t) {
t.state && location.replace("#")
}
} catch (o) {}
}();
</script>

This script modifies browser Back history by calling history.pushState(), multiple entries (e.g. "#" or "voluumtrk.com/click" links), are created under the Back button history list that you could see in the browser.
Eventually this is causing multiple extra clicks reported in Voluum.
Just simply remove the function from both LP's and see the result - this will prevent creating extra entries in browser Back button history list.

The intention for using Back Fix script was to redirect user somewhere else, e.g. YTZ/Monetize url's or to other site (not to your Voluum link) to give a chance to monetize the dropout from the initial LP.

I have also ran tests using the bot detection script (provided by @MrGreen) - got the similar 50-75% of human traffic.
I think that this approach is quite basic, since the implementation of such scripts/programs should have been improved - running Javascript is not a problem.
I believe we should use much more comprehensive methods of detection of artificial (bot) traffic.

Guys, thank you very much for all your valuable comments!

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