Bot Traffic on Your Ad Exchange: How to Avoid DSP & SSP Fraud
Free IP lookup API to uncover fraud, bots, and high risk users.
Whether you’re an ad exchange, demand side platform (DSP), supply side platform (SSP), ad network or publisher, you want to be reasonably assured that you’re doing the most you can to reduce the risk of bot fraud on your platform. The less effective a campaign is due to fake bot traffic, the less likely a business will want to continue the marketing spend on your exchange.
What can ad exchanges and other market participants do to stop bots? How can they reassure publishers and advertisers the platform is bot-free and worth their budget? Let’s review and analyze the four main ways to prevent bots from invading your platform.
Proactive Bot Prevention Strategy for Exchanges
This strategy focuses on identifying and blocking fraudulent activity before it hits your platform through filtering traffic and verifying users/bids, acting as your first line of defense against bot networks.
Traffic Filtering
- IP Blocklists & Risk Scoring – Deploy comprehensive IP reputation systems to block known fraudulent sources while assigning dynamic risk scores to incoming traffic.
- Digital Fingerprinting – This technology identifies suspicious anomalies such as mismatched device-user profiles or artificially generated fingerprints used by bots.
- Server-to-Server (S2S) Validation - Validate traffic through secure data streams with direct server communication channels that bypass possible client-side manipulation
Prebid Fraud Detection
- Third-Party Verification Integration – Incorporate established verification platforms directly into your prebid pipeline to screen inventory and traffic quality.
- Authorized Seller Validation – Implement strict ads.txt and app-ads.txt compliance protocols to verify that inventory originates exclusively from authorized sellers.
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Real-Time Bot Monitoring & Anomaly Detection
Continuous monitoring systems ensure that if bots do manage to get through to the exchange, they are identified and dealt with immediately. These systems adapt to evolving threat patterns while maintaining flexibility to distinguish between legitimate traffic variations and coordinated fraud attempts.
- Machine Learning Algorithms – Deploy sophisticated AI models that continuously analyze traffic patterns to identify irregular behaviors that are signs of bot activity.
- Rate-Limiting Controls – Implement intelligent throttling mechanisms that restrict excessive requests from users, this counters botnets from overloading your server while allowing normal use of the site.
- Geographic & Temporal Analysis – Monitor traffic distribution across geographic regions and time zones to identify anomalous patterns.
It should be noted that because of the scale of traffic and transactions on an exchange, these solutions will typically be enterprise-level tools, designed for processing massive amounts of data in real-time.
Supply Chain Transparency
Establishing clear visibility and accountability at every level while eliminating opportunities for bots to operate in hidden segments of the ecosystem. This transparency-first approach ensures that every impression can be traced back to its legitimate source.
- Sellers.json & SupplyChain Object Implementation – Deploy comprehensive seller identification systems that provide complete visibility into all inventory intermediaries and reseller relationships.
- Direct Publisher Partnerships – Establish exclusive relationships with thoroughly vetted publishers through direct deals and preferred marketplace access.
Post-Campaign Accountability
Comprehensive post-campaign analysis transforms fraud detection from a preventive measure into a continuous improvement process that strengthens future campaign protection while ensuring accountability for current performance.
- Post-Bid Analysis & Remediation – Conduct thorough audits of impression logs and performance data following campaign completion to identify previously undetected fraud patterns.
- Transparency Reporting – Provide detailed performance metrics, including viewability rates, invalid traffic percentages, and quality scores that demonstrate campaign integrity to stakeholders.
- Shared Threat Intelligence – Participate in collaborative blocklist initiatives by providing post-hoc data on IPs or devices that have been found to be used by bots to leverage pooled threat data for better prevention in the future.
Post-Campaign Accountability
Comprehensive post-campaign analysis transforms fraud detection from a preventive measure into a continuous improvement process that strengthens future campaign protection while ensuring accountability for current performance.
- Post-Bid Analysis & Remediation – Conduct thorough audits of impression logs and performance data following campaign completion to identify previously undetected fraud patterns.
- Transparency Reporting – Provide detailed performance metrics, including viewability rates, invalid traffic percentages, and quality scores that demonstrate campaign integrity to stakeholders.
- Shared Threat Intelligence – Participate in collaborative blocklist initiatives by providing post-hoc data on IPs or devices that have been found to be used by bots to leverage pooled threat data for better prevention in the future.
Assure Ad Buyers & Publishers You Can Stop Bots
Once these bot fraud solutions are active on your exchange, your platform transforms from a passive marketplace into an actively secured environment that market participants can trust with confidence. By implementing these interconnected systems, proactive traffic filtering, real-time anomaly detection, supply chain transparency, and post-campaign accountability, your exchange demonstrates a commitment to quality that goes beyond basic compliance, positioning your platform as a premium destination where market participants know their advertising dollars are working.
Being able to identify known generators of bot traffic is also crucial. That’s what our anti-fraud solutions can do. Please read about the methodology we’ve developed to detect and block bots. Get in touch with us today to learn more about protecting your ads, affiliate programs, and website from malicious bot traffic.