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How do I know if my ads are getting invalid traffic?

On this page

Connect your ad account and look. Tapper tracks every ad click that reaches your site, decides whether it is valid and shows the invalid share per campaign, keyword, device and country. During a free trial Tapper runs in monitor-only, so you see what it would exclude before it excludes anything.

What invalid traffic is

Any ad click that was never going to become a customer: competitor clicks, bot traffic, click farms, and visitors behind VPNs and proxies. Most paid accounts get some. How much depends on your industry, campaign types and platforms, so Tapper measures your own account instead of quoting an average.

See it first without blocking anything

Every new rule set starts with Monitor-only on, and it stays on during a free trial. Tapper records every invalid click but writes no exclusions from what it detects, and every page shows a Monitor-only notice. The labels change, the measurement does not:

Blocking workspaceMonitor-only workspace
Total BlockedTotal Invalid
IP-Blocked VisitorsIP-Flagged Visitors
Audience BlocksInvalid Audience Exclusion Users
Reallocated SpendWasted Spend (shown in red)
Block reasonInvalid traffic reason
Exclusions pageFlagged traffic page

See Monitor-only.

Where to look

1. The dashboard Overview

Invalid Traffic % is the headline ("Invalid clicks ÷ connected clicks"). Beside it, Total Clicks and Valid Clicks ("Connected clicks minus invalid clicks") give the absolute size. The default range is the last 7 days in your workspace time zone; widen it with the date button.

2. The Invalid Traffic tab

Under Dashboard, open Invalid traffic. Screenshot this page when someone asks whether your ads are affected.

  • Tiles: Total Blocked ("Blocked visitors, counted once a day"), IP-Blocked Visitors, Audience Blocks and Invalid Traffic %.
  • Blocked traffic by block reason and Block reason trend: which kinds you get and whether they grow.
  • Invalid click frequencies: how many invalid visitors clicked once, twice, up to 51+ times.
  • Top blocked campaigns and Keyword-level invalid traffic: where it lands.

Every card: Reading the Invalid traffic tab.

3. The Clicks page

Traffic > Clicks lists each ad click with its Verdict, Valid or Invalid, and the reasons under an invalid one. Filter by Was blocked (Invalid traffic in monitor-only) for the invalid ones. Click a row to open the click details. See The Clicks page and the click details.

4. The Sources page

Traffic > Sources shows invalid traffic from platforms you have not connected. Tapper spots them by the click ID in the landing URL (fbclid for Meta Ads, ttclid for TikTok Ads, msclkid for Microsoft Ads). Per platform it shows Platform, Clicks, Invalid clicks and Invalid rate over the last 30 days, with Set up ad account. Only an Owner or Admin can open it. See The Sources page.

5. The monthly report

After each month closes, Reports has a report with an IVT Rate card and an Invalid Traffic Types section per platform. See Monthly reports.

Reading the numbers

  • Invalid Traffic % is invalid clicks divided by the clicks on your connected ad accounts. It counts clicks, not visitors, so a visitor who clicked several times adds each click.
  • The dashboard updates every 4 hours. Give a new account a few hours.
  • No clicks at all usually means a monitoring script or tracking template problem: see No clicks on the dashboard.

Still need help?

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