Invalid Click Rates Rise for Education Brands Bidding on Competitor Keywords
· 2h ago · Originally reported by PPC Land
A study by Lunio found that education advertisers bidding on rival brand names experienced a 9.3% invalid click rate. Overall, sector-wide invalid traffic increased from 4.08% to 5.42% across Google, Meta, and native ad platforms between late 2025 and mid-2026.
Why it matters
Rising invalid click rates directly impact the profitability of search arbitrage by increasing wasted spend and reducing net earnings from arbitraged traffic. Operators and feed providers must monitor and mitigate IVT to maintain margins and avoid policy violations.
Explain it like I’m new here
It's like paying for bus tickets, but 1 out of every 10 riders is a fake person, so you lose money.
Terms in this story
Invalid click
An invalid click is a click on an ad that does not reflect genuine interest in the advertiser, so the advertiser should not be charged for it.
Click
A click is one person tapping or clicking on an ad or link and being taken to another page.
Invalid traffic (IVT)
Invalid traffic is any click, search or ad view that does not come from a real person with genuine interest, whether caused by bots, fraud or honest accident.
Business Manager (Meta)
Business Manager, now called a business portfolio, is Meta's top-level account that holds a company's ad accounts, Pages, pixels, payment methods and staff permissions.
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