When good publishers see bots coming to the site, they filter them so the ads are not called, thus protecting their advertisers. Unscrupulous websites would not do this, and in fact they may even buy traffic made by bots (euphemistically called "sourced traffic").

1. March 2017 / Page 0marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Example of publishers taking action to reduce bots
Publisher 1 – stopped buying traffic
Publisher 2 – filtered data center traffic

2. March 2017 / Page 1marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Publishers filtering bots – on-site vs in-ad
On-Site measurement,
bots are still coming
In-Ad measurement, bots
and data centers filtered
10% red
-7% (filter)
3% red

3. March 2017 / Page 2marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Dr. Augustine Fou – Independent Ad Fraud Researcher
2013
2014
Follow me on LinkedIn (click) and on Twitter
@acfou (click)
Further reading:
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentations
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou
2016
2015

4. March 2017 / Page 3marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Harvard Business Review
Excerpt:
Hunting the Bots
Fou, a prodigy who earned a Ph.D. from MIT at
23, belongs to the generation that witnessed
the rise of digital marketers, having crafted his
trade at American Express, one of the most
successful American consumer brands, and at
Omnicom, one of the largest global advertising
agencies. Eventually stepping away from
corporate life, Fou started his own practice,
focusing on digital marketing fraud
investigation.
Fou’s experiment proved that fake traffic is
unproductive traffic. The fake visitors inflated
the traffic statistics but contributed nothing to
conversions, which stayed steady even after the
traffic plummeted (bottom chart). Fake traffic is
generated by “bad-guy bots.” A bot is computer
code that runs automated tasks.