Non-genuine affiliate link interactions — clicks or conversions that are not generated by real consumers with genuine purchase intent — that consume program resources, distort performance metrics, or generate fraudulent commission payments. Invalid traffic is the umbrella category covering all forms of affiliate fraud including cookie stuffing, click fraud, bot traffic, self-referral, and transaction fraud. Types of invalid traffic in affiliate: general invalid traffic (GIVT): traffic from known non-human sources such as data center IP ranges, known bot IPs, and automated crawlers; GIVT is identifiable through IP range filtering and does not typically generate conversions; sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT): traffic from more advanced bot systems or coordinated human fraud rings that are designed to evade standard bot detection; SIVT may generate apparent conversions through coordinated transaction fraud. Impact by invalid traffic type: bot click traffic: inflates click volume, dilutes conversion rate metrics, increases network processing cost; fraudulent conversions: generate illegitimate commission payments against non-incremental or fraudulent purchases; cookie stuffing: generates commission on purchases the program did not influence, wasting affiliate budget on non-incremental conversions. Industry standards: the Media Rating Council (MRC) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) publish invalid traffic detection standards that affiliate networks use to benchmark their fraud detection programs; major networks report invalid traffic rates in their program-level analytics for brands that request this data. Monitoring: activate network fraud detection tools (Impact Protect, Awin Compliance, CJ IVT); monitor for publisher-level anomalies in click timing, conversion rate, new customer rate, and chargeback rate; review fraud tool flags within 48 hours; document all fraud investigations and enforcement actions.
Related Resources