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How to block BOT traffic on Native in 2018? (7)

10-23-2018 06:50 PM #1 desirock (Member)
How to block BOT traffic on Native in 2018?

Hey, STM community.

This is my first post. I am a newbie on this forum.

I have been studying ways to remove BOT traffic from native ads but most of the methods that I have come across are either old (post being 1 year old) or they dont work that great.

Wonder if I can get help in how to kill bots or even reduce their effect to maximise the ROI.

Your help will be really appreciated.

Thanks

10-23-2018 07:08 PM #2 jack_l (Veteran Member)

I will bump this too as I am curious about the same thing.

In the iStack Natives James Van Elswyck course there's the series of videos Tom Claflin did and in one he mentions what basically sounded like an 'invisible landing page' or redirect for use in direct linking that just serves to filter out bots to allow you to blacklist bad widgets when you don't have a landing page. I believe he references 'getting it on STM'. I've tried to search for that on here but haven't had any luck. If any veterans on here know what that filter/add-on is please share

10-23-2018 07:32 PM #3 eurosen (AMC Alumnus)

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...live-campaigns

10-23-2018 08:27 PM #4 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Thanks eurosen!

10-24-2018 08:31 AM #5 platinum (Veteran Member)

I have been studying ways to remove BOT traffic from native ads but most of the methods that I have come across are either old (post being 1 year old) or they dont work that great.

Spending too much time on this matter may end up becoming one of the reasons your campaigns are not performing that well. This simply by the fact that your focus has changed from conversions to bot detection.
There are several threads here on STM that cover this topic and in my opinion are by far the simplest and viable ways to deal with bots without having to pay for a proper bot detection service (which can be quite costly).

Here are a few threads that might give you some ideas:
STEP BY STEP: Running A Bot Test On Any Campaign
NEW: Zero (!) Load Time Bot Tester For Your Live Campaigns
How to Setup Your Own Bot Detector - Using FunnelFlux
A Simple Way to Detect Bot Traffic in Voluum

To add to the above, another good way to get rid of bot infested placements is using your campaigns statistics.
For instance, when using landing pages, you can kill publishers based on two basic metrics: traffic source clicks and landing page clicks. Simply implement a few optimization rules that fit your campaign performance goals in terms of click-through rate and conversion rate. Here are a few examples I've covered up in this other thread.

Hope the above helps and good luck

11-15-2018 08:42 PM #6 mr smith (Member)

Just try to use cloacking for bot filter

11-16-2018 03:46 AM #7 jack_l (Veteran Member)

The only things I've managed to do on this issue is the following:

1) invisible link on lp to catch bots that are set to click on lp links (set up as separate offer or branch in tracker and just turn a random period into a link that's almost the same color as the background.
2) blocking widgets after 5 or 10 or 20 (depends on traffic source) clicks with 0% lp ctr. (especially setting up optimizer to do this automatically)
3) keeping list of all the bad widgets you block and then blocking them automatically on all future campaigns

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