What IVT, GIVT and SIVT mean

In the MRC addendum to invalid-traffic detection standards, IVT is the umbrella name. The final edition of June 2020 splits it into two classes. GIVT is recognized routinely, by lists or by standard parameter checks. SIVT is harder to notice: it needs advanced analysis, a comparison of several signals, or substantial human involvement.

Below is what the standard gives as examples, and why the GIVT share in a Yandex Direct account is not the same list. The row Direct has already taken out of spend is described in invalid clicks. Bots and crawlers as programs with a purpose of their own are in kinds of bots.

GIVT is what a list or a routine check can name

The MRC addendum puts into GIVT the traffic that is caught routinely. The examples are for an accreditation audit, not as Direct’s taxonomy:

• known data-center traffic that consistently produces invalid activity and is not an artifact of how live users are routed;

• bots, spiders and other crawlers;

• checks on transaction parameters;

• a non-browser User-Agent;

• a preload after which a live person never opened the ad;

• known-bad placement sizes of 0×0 and 1×1;

• sessions that, on the client’s data, cannot render an image, including a headless browser.

The list should not be glued to other industry classifications: the document warns against mixing it with the TAG taxonomy. If a vendor report says only IVT, that is not yet GIVT. In the same document the word IVT covers both classes together.

SIVT is what a routine check is not enough for

The same document calls SIVT the situations that are harder to notice. The examples are automation from a dedicated device and from an infected or captured device, incentivized human activity, forced clicks and accidental clicks from a spoofed interface, fake measurement events, cloaked bots, and invalid proxy traffic.

A footnote gives a click farm as a case where non-robot activity is organized and directed through many users or machines. That is a classification for measurement, not a description of how a farm is built and not a set of instructions. How a farm is built is not covered here.

Over time, some SIVT can move into GIVT if standard lists appear. The document names no date and does not promise that all of it will move. It also says disclosed reward programs that do not aim to spoof measurement should not be mixed into this category. How such a program differs from a click a person was paid to make is covered in incentivized traffic.

Direct’s GIVT share is a different row

For reach campaigns, the Invalid traffic report shows a GIVT share. Direct’s guide calls it general incorrect traffic identified by standard parameter checks, and gives examples: bots and search robots. Performance campaigns do not have this share in the same sense.

The row is not the click-fraud percentage of search, and it is not the refund on a performance campaign. The guide does not spell out the “standard checks”. Equating the row with the MRC list is not supported: both sources keep them apart, and Direct does not publish a shared list.

Measurement classes are not the rules of an on-site check

An on-site visit check builds a decision from several independent observations: behavior, the browser environment, the network and address, request frequency, and the ad-click parameters. One observation does not know the rules of the others. Scores and the rules of individual checks are not published, and the GIVT and SIVT classes are not laid over them. The MRC standard describes ad measurement. It is not a Direct setting and not a description of the script.