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Simple Bots
Basic automated scripts that follow predictable patterns, use known data-centre IPs, and can be identified through user-agent strings and IP blacklists.
Fraud Type Guide
Non-Human Traffic (NHT): Everything You Need to Know
Nearly half of all internet traffic is generated by machines, not people. Learn how non-human traffic inflates your metrics, wastes ad spend, and corrupts campaign data.
What Is Non-Human Traffic?
Quick answer: Non-human traffic is any web activity not generated by a real person — including bots, crawlers, scrapers, and automated scripts. It’s synonymous with invalid traffic and is the core problem Opticks solves.
Non-human traffic (NHT) is the umbrella term for any web visit, ad impression, click, or interaction that originates from an automated program rather than a genuine human user. The term is used interchangeably with invalid traffic (IVT) and bot traffic, though NHT is the most precise description of the underlying problem.
NHT spans a wide spectrum — from beneficial search engine crawlers that index your content, to sophisticated fraud bots designed to drain advertising budgets. In the context of digital advertising, the focus is on the malicious end of that spectrum: bots that click on ads, inflate impressions, fill out forms with fake data, and corrupt your analytics.
The Media Rating Council (MRC) classifies NHT into two categories: General Invalid Traffic (GIVT), which includes known bots and data-centre traffic, and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT), which requires advanced analytics to detect.
Common Sources of Non-Human Traffic
Non-human traffic comes from a variety of automated systems, each with different levels of sophistication and intent.
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Sophisticated Bots
Advanced bots that mimic human behaviour — simulating mouse movements, scroll patterns, and realistic session durations — making them far harder to detect.
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Botnets
Networks of hijacked consumer devices (PCs, phones, IoT) controlled remotely to generate traffic that appears to come from real residential IP addresses.
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Data-Centre Traffic
Traffic originating from cloud hosting providers and server farms rather than residential or mobile networks — a clear indicator of automated activity.
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Scrapers and Crawlers
Automated programs that harvest content, pricing data, or competitive intelligence. While some are legitimate (Googlebot), others consume resources and skew analytics.
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Device Emulators
Software that simulates thousands of virtual devices to generate fake impressions, clicks, or app installs at scale — a common tool in device emulation fraud.
How Non-Human Traffic Affects Your Campaigns
When non-human traffic enters your advertising funnel, it creates damage at every level — from wasted spend to flawed strategy.
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Wasted Ad Spend
Every bot click on a PPC ad costs money. Every fake impression on a CPM campaign is a charge for reaching nobody. NHT directly drains your advertising budget.
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Polluted Analytics
NHT inflates pageviews, distorts bounce rates, and skews session duration data. Decisions based on bot-polluted analytics lead to misallocated budgets and flawed strategies.
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Contaminated Audiences
Bot visits create fake cookie profiles that enter your remarketing audiences, causing you to retarget non-existent users who will never convert.
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Algorithm Degradation
Ad platform algorithms optimise toward engagement signals. When those signals come from bots, algorithms learn to target the wrong profiles, progressively degrading performance.
Detecting Non-Human Traffic
Identifying NHT requires layered detection that goes beyond simple IP blacklists or user-agent filtering.
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Traffic Pattern Analysis
Look for sudden spikes in traffic without corresponding conversions, sessions with zero time on page, and activity concentrated at unusual hours or from unexpected geographies.
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Device Fingerprinting
Analyse browser attributes, screen resolution, installed plugins, and hardware characteristics to identify devices that don’t match genuine user profiles.
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Behavioural Analysis
Examine mouse movements, scroll patterns, keystroke dynamics, and navigation paths. Bots exhibit mechanical, repetitive behaviour that differs from human interaction.
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Network Intelligence
Check for traffic from data centres, VPNs, proxy servers, and residential proxy networks. Cluster analysis reveals coordinated bot activity across IP ranges.
Opticks integrates via a lightweight tag — install through Google Tag Manager in under five minutes with no code changes required.
How Opticks Detects Non-Human Traffic
Real-Time Detection
Every click, impression, and session is analysed against 30+ fraud signals in real time, catching both simple and sophisticated non-human activity before it corrupts your data.
Granular Reporting
See exactly which campaigns, placements, and traffic sources are sending non-human traffic. Filter by type, geography, device, and time period for complete visibility.
Actionable Intelligence
Use Opticks data to exclude NHT-heavy sources, optimise toward genuine human engagement, and ensure your ad budget reaches real users who can convert.
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