By Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager, BDX
Last month the BDX network served over 2.8 million clicks. However, not all of those clicks were sent to an advertiser’s website. Many of those clicks were identified as Bots and filtered out of our reporting. The Bot Filter is just one of the services BDX provides to help optimize performance for our builder advertisers.
Bots are a piece of software that scan websites and follow web links to create an index for major search engines. They’re not something a consumer would notice in their regular online activity but can have a profound affect for a webmaster looking at traffic and click trends.
In our BDX Ad reporting we typically see Bot Traffic as spikes in click thru activity for a builder. For example, a builder may average a .20 Click-Thru Rate (CTR) but occasionally performance will spike to five percent over a short period of time. By cross referencing the domain and IP we can typically identify and block the bot. However, other Bot Traffic is not as obvious and may appear as regular click activity. This is especially true if an advertiser is running GIF/JPEG files that will record all click activity (the Javascript in a SWF File or Ad Tag will typically filter the bot click).
In our review of Bot Traffic BDX has identified a series of browsers and IPs that represent three percent of all traffic but as much as twenty percent of the clicks for our builder advertisers. These clicks are recorded in our ad server but may not appear in a builder’s Google Analytics (After all, Google runs several bots of their own and automatically filters that traffic). The result is a natural discrepancy between publishers’ reports and what a builder sees in their analytics. Meaning publishers could report a high number of clicks & high CTR but the advertiser sees relatively little value.
By implementing the Bot Filter BDX is able to provide more accurate reporting that closely aligns to a builder’s backend reporting across all of the BDX advertising products from BeBack to Realtor.com. With more accurate reporting, we can better work with our advertisers to optimize their campaigns and improve our product offerings.
Many publishers and ad severs do have a bot filter included in their service and will only capture known bots identified by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. They don’t actively manage new bots regularly introduced into the market nor do I think most publishers apply the same level of scrutiny as BDX to identify these occasional spikes in click traffic.
If you’re working with a publisher and running online campaigns I’d recommend auditing performance to ensure numbers closely align to what’s reported. Setting up UTM tracking codes and developing campaign goals in Google Analytics are some easy ways to help track performance across different channels and optimize your media flight. As many of our advertisers work with limited resources it’s important that they have accurate data to make the right decisions regarding their marketing efforts. At BDX we work with several of our advertisers to help set up campaign goals allowing them to truly understand the value of their online advertising.
If you’d like additional information on some of the unique services BDX provides to optimize builder campaigns or assistance in setting up tracking in Google Analytics please contact me at traffic@thebdx.com.
Thane Tennison is the Advertising Manager for the BDX and manages hundreds of home builder brands across a network of over a dozen real estate websites.