Dive Brief:
- Are You A Human’s “State of the Human Internet Report 2015” poses the idea of a “verified human” whitelist to combat website bots.
- According to CEO Ben Trenda, the average lifespan of a bot is four to six days.
- After analyzing 3.2 billion impressions on more than 600 million devices, the digital security company could only verify 42% as definitely people and not bots.
Dive Insight:
Not all bots are bad. Google crawls the web regularly with bots to index websites; retailers use pricing bots to track competitors. But malicious bots commit ad fraud, scrape content and even post fake reviews.
According to White Ops, advertisers lost more than $6 billion to fake impressions to bots this year.
Are You A Human found bots that triggered mouse movement and passed verification tests ending up in traffic that had been verified as legitimate web visitors. Reid Tatoris, COO and co-founder of Are You a Human, told Ad Exchanger, “The bots we saw through ad units were both on the open exchange and through direct DSP relationships.”
Tendra explained to Marketing Land that the methodology is akin to countries setting up border security and issuing passports so as to be able to focus more on who can cross, rather than who can't. When asked whether bots could eventually become alert enough to mimic human movement, Tatoris told Marketing Land the chances were slim, saying "most bots are written to do one thing specifically" and bot makers have little incentive to do anything different.
One benefit of a “verified human” whitelist would be a reduced need for screening tech like capchas, questions or other filters so websites know that you are actually you.