16% of all Web Traffic in America is from Bots

Sites include solvemedia.com . Published on October 9th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Facebook came under fire recently for allegedly sending bot traffic to advertisers who bought ads on its platform. For a while the social networking giant made the case that the allegations weren’t true, but in the end, Facebook had to admit guilt.

Bots are everywhere and according to a new report from Solve Media, 16% of all web traffic in the US is generated from bots. These bots do anything from commenting on posts to clicking on ads and it is becoming a massive problem for advertisers and publishers.

The US is not alone though, and in countries like the Philippines and Singapore, the bot problem is pretty much an epidemic. Singapore for instance has a scale busting 56% of its traffic emanating from bots, while the Philippines have 43%.

Solve Media estimates that the potential costs to advertisers is somewhere near $1.5 billion; and that’s a conservative estimate. Incapsula, another analytics firm estimates the ad-waste at $4.7 billion.

The rise of sophisticated botnets further complicates the problem and often many users in the US will have their computers taken over by rogue software which then uses the computer to carry out these ‘robotic’ activities. Security firms will no doubt have to work harder to keep bot activity down—it certainly can’t be eliminated. Advertisers and publishers too need to keep an eye on their analytics.