Combating Bot Traffic (7)
Ok so I know this is an issue dealt with all the time, but recently I have been dealing with it more as Im running high volume app installs and I get a lot of installs that are obviously bots. Aside from the notice you get from the networks about quality, you can also see in the reporting apps in Japan installed with English as browser language or ridiciolus high CTR. What do you guys do to combat this? I was thinking I can set up a bridge page with an image that redirects in less than 1 seconds and whoever clicks on it will get redirected to a blank page or something.
your thoughts?
CHEAP SOLUTION
- Filter IP Address for common datacenters (Amazon, Google Cloud etc...), you can use Maxmind ISP for that, it's less than $25/month.
- To add more datacenter, start working with a user agent database (a very small example here to get you started : https://www.dropbox.com/s/a1hp4hor51...nedua.csv?dl=1) that are commonly used by bots. Insert in your database all IPs used by an user agent from this list and then check manually with Maxmind the ISP. If this ISP is a datacenter or a cloud provider add it to your list of banned datacenter (step 1).
- Use javascript redirect instead of HTML as most of basic bots can't follow a javascript redirection
- Use hidden link inside your landing page and record all IP and user agent from "visitors" that clicked on those links, repeat step 2 for those.
EXPENSIVE VERSION
- Use Digital Elements (~$2500USD per month for 20M queries) with their proxy database and bann all traffic coming from hosting etc...
I surely forgot a lot of things but that a good base to start playing with bots (and kick them in the nuts).
Alex
Yep, all of those are great ideas.
Filtering for common datacenters is a good, easy one to implement - many trackers can do that without custom code. Worth noting that Maxmind can also auto-flag proxy traffic, which may be worth doing too.
I wrote a step-by-step guide to detecting bots using a combination of Javascript and small delays a while ago: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...t=step-by-step . That may also be useful.
Tnx guys, very useful tips. I would recommend anyone using at least one method to fight bot traffic because otherwise your'e at a serious disadvantage. I read your post in the past caurmen and also tried that method but the data I got indicated like 70% bot traffic on a popads campaign with a redirect time of 1 second (after I increased it from the original suggestion)
so it seemed maybe it was being over protective (: but I don't know could be the device type like you mentioned there
Also what do you think about setting a landing page with 2 offers where the first offer is real one and is set to automatic redirect after 1 second using
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0.5; url=http://click.com?offer=1"/>
and offer 2 is an image that sends visitor to a white page
It's seems like you don't see any problem with the 1s delay. 
Get over it, nobody will wait a popped window for 1s to load and then convert. Besides that you'll have other factors like landing page load time, carrier speed, offer page loading time, the device itself, etc that will add delays to that 1s.
If you don't want to go with paid bot trapping services have a combination of two or more methods mentioned on Caurmen's post. Redirect script, almost same color as background link.
Minimize delays to aim for better CTR and CR
Yup, I wouldn't leave ANY delay script running on pops long-term. Speed is everything in pops - use it for a little while to detect bad placements, then if you're still having problems switch to a faster method, as Platinum says.
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