The Good Tech Companies - The Hidden Cost of Invalid Traffic: Why IP Data Is the Missing Link

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/the-hidden-cost-of-invalid-traffic-why-ip-data-is-the-missing-link. IPinfo stops invalid traffic by detecting bots, VPNs, and proxies with real-time IP intelligence, helping ad platforms cut waste and improve ROI. Check more stories related to cybersecurity at: https://hackernoon.com/c/cybersecurity. You can also check exclusive content about #ip-address-intelligence, #ip-data-for-adtech, #invalid-traffic-detection, #residential-proxy-detection, #digital-advertising-accuracy, #bot-traffic-mitigation, #advertising-fraud-prevention, #good-company, and more. This story was written by: @ipinfo. Learn more about this writer by checking @ipinfo's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Invalid traffic (IVT) is draining billions from advertising budgets as bots, VPNs, and residential proxies distort CPMs, attribution, and ROI. IPinfo prevents these losses by identifying non-human traffic at the IP level using continuously validated, measurement-based IP intelligence. With real-time proxy/VPN detection, active IPv6/IPv4 validation, and high-accuracy enrichment, platforms can block IVT before it enters auctions—leading to cleaner supply, better performance, and stronger ROI.

This audio is presented by Hacker Noon, where anyone can learn anything about any technology. The hidden cost of invalid traffic. YIP data is the missing link by IP info IP data provider. Invalid traffic, IVT, creates more than a reporting issue. It's also a budget leak. More than half of all internet traffic today is non-human. Bots, VPNs, and residential proxies quietly distort ad performance, inflate costs, and sabotage attribution models, resulting in spending millions optimizing for traffic that never converts. Advertisers were expected to waste $70 billion on invalid traffic in 2024, up from 33% in 2022. The costs compound fast, inflated CPMs, wasted impressions, and misattributed conversions all drag down ROI. That's why

forward-thinking ad tech and MARTEC platforms are flipping their model, stopping IVT instead of cleaning it up. What invalid traffic really looks like? In AdTech, Invalid traffic refers to any impression, click, or conversion that doesn't come from a real human user. It's a broad category that's quickly evolving. Once limited to obvious botnets and click farms, IVT now includes highly sophisticated sources that blend into legitimate activity, automated bots that mimic browsing behavior, load pages, and click ads. Residential proxies that make automated traffic appear to come from real households. VPNs and anonymizers used to hide geography, identity, or device type. Hosting infrastructure that runs large-scale scraping, spoofing,

or ad fraud operations. YIT matters when IVT infiltrates your ad supply. CPMs rise because bots drive up competition in auctions. Attribution breaks as fake clicks and conversions distort performance data. Budgets leaked toward traffic that will never convert. R-O-I falls while teams spent time optimizing for the wrong audience. These issues result in higher costs and wasted strategy. Fraudulent impressions lead to flawed conclusions about what's working, which channels convert, and who your audience really is. How IP Info stops IVT before it starts. IP Info's approach is built around real-time, evidence-based IP intelligence. Instead of relying on static IP reputation lists or outdated geo-feeds,

IP Info continuously validates billions of IP addresses every day, helping platforms block non-human traffic before it ever enters their auction. Residential proxy detection catch bot traffic hidden behind residential IPs, the most sophisticated, and difficult to identify, form of IVT. IP Info's residential proxy detection data detects rotating residential proxy services that evade traditional filters. Hosting and VPN detection block or segment known bot infrastructure. IPInfo's privacy detection data flags data center IPs, VPN providers, and tour exit nodes so platforms can decide if and how they want to sort. serve ads to anonymized IPs. Continuously validated data every data point is backed by ProbeNet, IPInfo's internet measurement platform. With 1,200 plus points of presence, 175 million

daily checks and 61 billion refreshed data points across IPV4 and IPV6. With 100% coverage of allocated IPV6 space, IP Info maintains the industry's most current view of the global IP landscape. How it works. Lightning Fasting. integration means minimal engineering effort. API lookups in milliseconds for live auctions. MMDB, CSV, JSON, and Parquet downloads for custom ingestion. Snowflake and BigQuery data shares for native enrichment in your cloud stack. IPInfo's IP enrichment can slot directly into DSPs, SSPs, attribution systems, or internal data pipelines, filtering bad traffic before it distorts campaign performance. Get even more granular context with geoconfidence, accuracy radius, and last

change stability fields, revealing data reliability, cleaner supply, better ROI, platforms and networks using IP info report, up to 30% fewer wasted bids from invalid traffic. Higher CPMs driven by trusted, verified supply, reduced post-bid disputes and smoother partner relationships, more accurate measurement and attribution, finally aligning spend with real users. Learn more. Download our one pager to learn more about how IP info pre-filters IVT and how one ad tech company saw their results transform after integrating IP info data. Thank you for listening to this Hackernoon story, read by artificial intelligence. Visit hackernoon.com to read, write, learn and publish.