A report published by Lunio, the invalid traffic (IVT) detection & prevention platform, has revealed that $63 billion (€53.6bn) in global digital ad spend is wasted each year on bot traffic and ad fraud.

Lunio’s 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report analyses more than 2.7 billion paid ad clicks across major platforms including Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and Bing – spanning August 2024 to August 2025. The findings reveal the true scale and commercial impact of invalid traffic across industries, regions, and campaign types.

Invalid traffic (IVT) refers to any click, impression, or conversion that does not come from a user with genuine intent. This includes coordinated bot activity, automated scraping, malicious competitor behaviour, and accidental ad clicks. While not always malicious, invalid traffic is always wasteful – draining budgets, polluting analytics, and misleading automated targeting algorithms.

IVT is a hidden tax on performance marketing

Across the full dataset, Lunio found that 8.51 per cent of all paid traffic is invalid, creating a silent but material drag on return on ad spend.

At scale, the commercial impact is severe. For advertisers operating with a 3-4x ROAS, even a single-digit IVT rate can translate into millions in lost revenue opportunity, as budgets are consumed by traffic that will never convert and optimisation algorithms are trained on misleading signals.

Nick Morley, CEO of Lunio, commented: “Invalid traffic is one of the biggest invisible drains on digital performance. Marketers trust platform metrics, but in reality, a meaningful share of what they’re paying for was never real engagement in the first place. And when that noisy and polluted data feeds into automated bidding and targeting algorithms, the waste compounds even further.”

TikTok and social platforms show highest IVT exposure

The report highlights stark differences between ad platforms. TikTok recorded the highest average IVT rate at 24.2 per cent, meaning nearly one in four paid ad clicks showed signs of invalid or non-human activity.

Rapid user growth and high volumes of coordinated automated engagement have made TikTok particularly vulnerable to fake clicks and synthetic user behavior. But other social platforms such as LinkedIn and X / Twitter showed high degrees of bot exposure too, with IVT rates of 19.88 per cent and 12.79 per cent respectively.

Of the leading social platforms, Meta performed best with an average IVT of 8.2 per cent. Years of litigation and legal pressure have driven Meta to invest more in bot detection and ad fraud prevention to shore up advertiser confidence. And these efforts have placed them ahead of their competitors in social advertising.

Google’s stronger defences still have blind spots 

Among major search platforms, Google continues to outperform Bing / Microsoft in limiting invalid traffic. Lunio’s analysis shows Google Ads recorded an average IVT rate of 7.57 per cent, compared to 10.32 per cent on Bing, reflecting Google’s longer history of scrutiny, litigation, and investment in fraud detection.

However, the data also reveals significant weaknesses within Google’s broader advertising ecosystem. While Search remains the cleanest format, with an average IVT rate of 5.21 per cent, exposure rises sharply as campaigns expand into automated inventory. Display campaigns recorded a 12.02 per cent IVT rate, while Video campaigns reached 20.62 per cent, driven largely by activity across the Google Video Partners (GVP) network.

This risk is compounded by Google’s push toward automation. Campaign types such as Performance Max, which pool Search, Display, and Video inventory, recorded higher IVT rates than Search alone, while limiting advertiser visibility and control over placements. As a result, invalid traffic from higher-risk networks can bleed into otherwise clean campaigns.

So, Google may remain the strongest option in search, but as automation expands reach across its wider ecosystem, visibility into traffic quality becomes critical to prevent waste from scaling alongside performance.

Lead generation and high-value industries hit hardest

Industries built around lead generation – including financial services, insurance, education, utilities, and telecoms – face disproportionately high IVT exposure. Lunio found that lead gen campaigns experience 32 per cent higher invalid traffic rates than eCommerce models.

But it was Gaming and iGaming that topped the industry rankings, with a staggering average IVT rate of 18.49 per cent. This is largely driven by high CPCs, aggressive competition, and targeted sophisticated fraud activity.

A growing challenge as automation accelerates

The report warns that a new category of traffic is emerging – agentic AI. These are autonomous systems that browse, compare, and interact with ads on behalf of users. While not inherently fraudulent, this activity blurs the line between genuine human intent and synthetic engagement, creating a growing challenge for performance marketers over the next 12 months.

As AI-driven agents become more capable of mimicking real user behaviour (including scrolling, dwell time, and conversion actions) traditional metrics such as clicks and conversions will become less reliable indicators of true demand. In this environment, optimization algorithms risk training themselves on engagement that looks valuable, but doesn’t reflect real buying intent.

Simran Cashyap, CPTO at Lunio, commented: “Agentic AI will fundamentally challenge how the industry defines ‘real’ traffic. The real risk over the next couple of years is the gap between how fast these agents evolve and how slowly detection catches up. Advertisers will need more powerful tools and tighter protection around the signals that steer optimisation if they want to keep performance grounded in reality.”

As automation continues to reshape digital advertising, the report concludes that traffic quality visibility is becoming a competitive advantage, not just a defensive measure enabling teams to optimise with confidence as synthetic activity becomes harder to spot.

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Categories: Advertising, Articles, Markets, Research, Social Media

Tags: advertising, google, IVT, lunio, meta, tiktok