With U.S. retailers preparing for another record-setting Black Friday and Cyber Monday season, Spider Labs warns that advertisers may face heightened exposure to invalid traffic (IVT) and automated non-human activity. According to new findings from its ad fraud prevention platform, Spider AF, increases in fraudulent behavior most consistently align with periods of accelerated budget deployment, a dynamic commonly seen during peak holiday sales cycles.
Fraud Patterns Follow Ad Demand
Spider AF’s analysis of e-commerce, travel, and service-sector advertisers shows that IVT rates frequently rose during periods of rapid budget expansion and increased competition, regardless of industry or campaign type.
“Fraudsters target moments when advertiser spend rises quickly,” said Satoko Otsuki, CEO of Spider Labs. “Events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday often lead to faster bidding cycles and reduced oversight. Those conditions create stronger economic incentives for abuse.”
Satoko noted that Spider AF’s dataset reflects the environments monitored by the platform rather than the global market as a whole, but the observed behaviors align with widely documented patterns in performance advertising.
Automation Increases Exposure to Risk
Spider AF’s 2024 dataset shows that 18.5% of all invalid interactions originated from automated sources, including 11.6% from data-center traffic across 4.15 billion measured clicks. In individual accounts, these concentrations were significantly higher; one travel advertiser saw over 80% of invalid clicks traced to data-center origins, a typical indicator of scripted, non-human execution.
Because automated interactions resemble legitimate engagement patterns, they directly influence how bidding systems interpret performance. A study of 324 companies showed that conversion rates from invalid clicks (1.29%) were roughly half those of legitimate clicks (2.54%), underscoring how automated noise weakens optimization inputs and increases cost inefficiencies.
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“When interaction data becomes polluted, models start allocating spend toward patterns that never had real intent,” Satoko said. “The immediate loss is wasted spend, but the longer-term impact is mislearning. Once a model internalizes misleading signals, the performance damage continues beyond the original fraud event.”
A Broader Marketing Security Concern
Across the U.S. market, advertisers are increasingly treating fraud prevention as part of a broader marketing security strategy — protecting budgets, data quality, and automated decision systems from both non-human behavior and real-user abuse.
Spider AF’s global 2024 dataset showed an average ad fraud rate of 5.1% with some networks exceeding 46%. High-CPC verticals such as finance, telecom, real estate, and insurance showed some of the highest exposure rates.
“Protecting data quality is fundamental to protecting ad spend,” Satoko said. “Clean engagement signals are what allow marketers to make accurate decisions and maintain reliable optimization.”
About Spider Labs
Spider Labs, Inc. is the company behind Spider AF, a software platform that protects digital campaigns from invalid clicks, fake leads, bots, and other ad fraud. Spider AF provides real-time monitoring, automated blocking, and clear reporting so advertisers can safeguard budgets and trust their data. Its solutions include PPC Protection, Fake Lead Protection, SiteScan, and anti-scalping controls. For more information, visit spideraf.com.
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