What does IVT stand for?
IVT stands for invalid traffic. It means ad clicks, impressions or visits that do not come from a real person with genuine interest. The term covers obvious automation such as crawlers, deliberate fraud such as bots and click farms, and human activity that should not be billed, such as accidental or incentivised clicks. Advertisers are not meant to pay for it.
The Media Rating Council divides invalid traffic into GIVT, general invalid traffic that simple lists and rules can catch, and SIVT, sophisticated invalid traffic designed to look human. The MRC sets the standards that measurement vendors are audited against.
In search arbitrage the term has a commercial edge. Search engines remove invalid clicks from billing and from publisher earnings, so a publisher's IVT rate shows up directly as the gap between estimated and final revenue. Google's own definition is broad, covering any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings, whether intentional or not.