Not all clicks are created equal.

Some clicks are clearly fraudulent, generated by people or automated software in an attempt to exploit the advertising marketplace for monetary gain or to simply disrupt and damage a given company or the ecosystem as a whole. Other clicks are non-malicious, but nonetheless invalid, such as accidental clicks or repetitive clicks by the same user on the same advertisement. A greater number still are perfectly valid. But what does validity mean?

Ultimately, all clicks are judged on their probability to convert for an advertiser, and every click is different. Each provides a different level of value dependent upon where it lies along a spectrum of click quality.

Everyone in the online ecosystem suffers from poor traffic quality: advertisers pay real dollars with no chance for positive return, ad networks feel the pain when advertisers scale back spending or publishers demand higher fees, and publishers generate lower earnings per click and less overall ad revenue when poor quality traffic enters the mix. Meanwhile, finding the right high quality traffic can maximize value for all parties involved.

In an industry that is becoming increasingly complex, it is difficult to determine the quality of the traffic that ad networks and publishers generate or that online advertisers receive. Ad networks and search engines syndicate to one another, some publishers mask the true source of their traffic, and nobody shares data. This lack of transparency severely limits any visibility into where ads are actually being served, who is clicking on them, and the likelihood for those clicks to convert.