Invalid traffic and click fraud has found ChatGPT ads

Up to one in three clicks on some campaigns on OpenAI's paid ads in ChatGPT are invalid, according to ASX-listed Adveritas’ ad verification platform TrafficGuard.

The analysis, covering 47 advertisers over three weeks, found a large share of the invalid traffic came from a small number of coordinated, automated sources active within weeks of the channel launching.

Chat GPT Ads launched in April this year and has since expanded into introducing conversion optimisation, geographic targeting and custom audiences.

Mathew Ratty, co-founder and CEO of TrafficGuard, said automated traffic has already found ChatGPT advertising, despite it being in its early days.

"Invalid traffic and click fraud is not just a problem for mainstream online advertising channels. Even though ChatGPT advertising is in its early days, automated traffic has already found it," Ratty said.

"It is coordinated, it is persistent and it is clicking every day. Most advertisers have no idea how much of their spend is going to it.

"In the data that we analysed, up to one in three clicks added no value. On the worst-hit account, nearly 90% of flagged clicks came from server infrastructure with no human user behind it. Every dollar spent on a click that can never convert is a dollar taken from a real customer."

The study found invalid rates ranged from 0.1% to 34% by advertiser, with some campaigns largely clean and others attracting clicks with no chance of converting to a customer.

TrafficGuard found 15 servers at a single hosting provider clicked ads from five advertisers 318 times over three weeks, on every day of the study, with none of the clicks originating from a person.

Four hosting and proxy networks reached 25 of the 47 advertisers analysed and accounted for half of all invalid clicks recorded.

Compared with the same advertisers' Google Ads campaigns, ChatGPT clicks came from datacentre and proxy infrastructure at 3.6 times the rate, and clicks from device configurations that cannot exist in the real world appeared at ten times the rate.

Waste is rising across every paid channel, not just ChatGPT.

"Some campaigns we analysed were largely clean, but others were paying for clicks that had no chance of converting," Miguel Lopes, chief product officer at TrafficGuard, said.

"What this demonstrates is that waste is rising across every paid channel. OpenAI is not uniquely vulnerable, it is simply the newest place to sell clicks, and low-quality traffic follows the budget wherever it goes."

Read the full article at AdNews

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