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Google Marketing Live 2026 recap: What actually matters
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The State of Click Fraud Report 2026

We surveyed 131 senior marketing leaders to build a definitive picture of how invalid traffic is affecting performance budgets in 2026 — from bots and click farms to the new wave of agentic AI.

The findings reveal a critical gap: click fraud has become one of marketers’ top concerns, yet almost none are actively protected against it. Invalid traffic is no longer just wasting media spend — it’s corrupting CRM data, wasting sales teams’ time on fake leads, and training automated bidding systems to chase non-human ‘converters’.

Download the full report for every stat, chart, and finding.

131 Senior marketers surveyed (May 2026)
75.6% Lose more than 5% of monthly performance budget to invalid traffic
85.6% Are concerned about agentic AI and invalid traffic rates
5.3% Currently use a dedicated IVT prevention platform

What's covered?

  • How much of the average performance budget is lost to invalid traffic each month — and how quickly it adds up at scale

  • Which platforms marketers rank as the highest risk for click fraud (and where the surprises are)

  • Why automated campaign types like Performance Max and Advantage+ are raising marketers’ suspicions

  • The ‘ghost converter’ feedback loop: how agentic AI is poisoning conversion signals and smart bidding

  • The trust deficit around platform-reported ‘invalid click’ credits

  • What’s actually stopping marketers from adopting prevention — and the metric most likely to win CFO sign-off
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What is invalid traffic?

 

Invalid traffic (IVT) is any click, impression, or conversion that doesn’t come from a genuine, interested human. It includes coordinated bot activity, automated scraping, malicious competitor clicks, accidental clicks — and, increasingly, autonomous AI agents. It’s not always malicious, but it’s always wasteful: draining budgets, polluting analytics, and misleading the automated systems that decide where your next pound is spent.

 

Why 2026 is different

 

Historically, invalid traffic was treated as a media-efficiency nuisance. In 2026 it’s a business problem. As marketers pour more budget into performance channels and hand more decisions to AI-driven optimisation, invalid traffic doesn’t just waste spend — it corrupts the data those systems learn from. When bots generate signals that look like conversions, bidding algorithms start targeting more traffic like it. The result is a feedback loop that quietly steers campaigns away from real customers, exactly as marketers scale their most-trusted channels.



 

 FAQs

How many marketers were surveyed?

131 senior marketing leaders, in May 2026, across a mix of brand (74%) and agency (26%) marketers.

 
How much budget do marketers lose to invalid traffic? More than three-quarters (75.6%) estimate losing over 5% of monthly performance budget; nearly half (48.1%) lose between 5% and 10%.
Which platform is seen as highest risk? Google Search (35.9%), followed by TikTok and Meta (22.9% each).
What is a ‘ghost converter’? A non-human interaction (typically a bot or AI agent) that generates conversion-like signals, causing bidding algorithms to optimise toward more of the same fake traffic.
Is the report free?

Yes, it’s completely free to download.

 

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