GIVT

General invalid traffic (GIVT) is the class of invalid ad traffic that can be caught with routine filters based on lists or standard checks, such as known data-centre traffic, declared bots and non-browser user agents.

The Media Rating Council sets the definition for accredited measurement. Its IVT standards addendum, updated in June 2020, describes GIVT as traffic identified through routine filtration, using lists or other standardised parameter checks (MRC, IVT Detection and Filtration Standards Addendum, update, June 2020).

Its examples are concrete. They include known invalid data-centre traffic; bots, spiders and crawlers; activity-based filtering of transaction data; and non-browser user agents. They also include pre-fetched or pre-rendered pages the user never saw, ads in 0x0 or 1x1 slots, and sessions that cannot render images, such as headless browsers. For data-centre traffic, the MRC points to industry lists such as TAG's Data Center IP list. Every accredited measurer must filter GIVT. Bots that a publisher declares and permits, for example for brand-safety scanning, should be reported as a separate subset.

GIVT is the easy part of the problem. The harder cases fall under sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT).

Example: A verification report shows 2.1% GIVT on a campaign. Most of it comes from data-centre IP addresses on the TAG list and from a crawler with a declared user agent. The vendor removes both from billable impressions automatically, with no investigation needed.

Related terms: SIVT, IVT, viewability, ads.txt, brand safety.

Authoritative source: Media Rating Council, "Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Standards Addendum", update (final, June 2020), section 1.1.2.

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