Fake Web Traffic Is Seen Rising 33% in 2024

This challenge comes on top of a broad slowdown in the growth of ad spending (5.3%) in 2023, which followed the ongoing recession in the U.S. and a decline in economic activity.

Lunio's study, which examined 2.6 billion paid ad clicks and 104 billion impressions from 60,000 ad accounts, revealed that 8.5% of paid traffic across major platforms — including Meta, TikTok, Google, Linkedin and X (formerly Twitter) — is invalid.

This equates to one fake visit in every 12 website visits.

Invalid traffic diminishes ad spend and makes for a time-consuming dilemma for marketers. Handling spam leads rooted in fake clicks results in budget misallocations and unreliable revenue predictions, and could cause a $213 billion loss in business revenue next year.

Analysts and agencies worldwide have forecasted 2024 to have a single-digit percentage increase in global ad spending compared to 2023, with Zenith projecting a 7.4% jump and Dentsu predicting a 3.9% expansion.

Which Platform Gets the Most Fake Leads?

LinkedIn emerged with the highest invalid traffic rate at 25%, according to Lunio's report.

Because of this, marketers are seen wasting an estimated f $1.26 billion in 2024 ad spending on LinkedIn's invalid traffic.

Combined together, Meta, Bing, LinkedIn, X and Pinterest tend to show higher invalid traffic rates (17.5%) in contrast to Google channels (5.5%).

Commenting on the results, Lunio's co-founder Neil Andrew stressed that the escalating prevalence of bots, fake users and fake clicks affects budgets, CRM systems, analytics and the time and energy of sales teams.

“It's never been more important for marketers to find new insights on maximizing ad spend efficiency and eliminating sources of fake ad engagement. It's the only way marketers can leverage a digital advertising ecosystem where every click, impression and placement drives genuine value," Andrew concluded.