Invalid traffic has become one of the most expensive problems in digital advertising.

A recently released Global Invalid Traffic Report 2026 from Lunio found the average invalid traffic (IVT) rate across digital advertising now sits at 8.51%. This means nearly 1 in every 12 paid interactions is invalid. With global digital ad spend exceeding $740 billion, that translated into $63 billion in wasted spend in 2025 alone.

For advertisers, especially retail brands investing in mobile gaming environments, the stakes are real. IVT wastes impressions and quietly erodes performance, misguides optimization, and undermines return on ad spend.

Last year, our measured IVT rate across Consumable digital audio campaigns was approximately 0.39% (measured by HUMAN). That outcome reflects deliberate choices we make to protect advertiser investment.

We don’t view invalid traffic as an unavoidable cost of doing business. We’ve taken a clear position: Protecting advertisers from IVT in digital audio is not optional, and it’s not someone else’s responsibility. It’s a core part of how we operate.

Where Invalid Traffic Thrives

IVT is not evenly distributed across digital media. It tends to spike in environments that combine automation, scale, and limited transparency, and creates meaningful risk for performance-driven advertisers.

Industry research consistently points to a few shared characteristics:

• Mobile apps and mobile gaming environments experience some of the highest IVT rates, averaging nearly 18.5%, making them among the most fraud-exposed digital verticals.

• IVT is increasingly “soft” and difficult to detect, designed to closely mimic legitimate human behavior and bypass native platform protections or refunds.

• Surface-level performance signals are becoming less reliable, as automated activity narrows the gap between simulated and real engagement.

• Some of the most consequential forms of IVT only emerge after delivery, requiring impression-level and behavioral analysis rather than reliance on pre-bid filtering alone.

For advertisers focused on outcomes, these dynamics have real performance consequences.

Delivering Audio in Mobile Gaming Environments

At Consumable, we’ve expanded the audio ecosystem with Visual Audio, delivering high-impact placements inside mobile gaming apps, where scale and engagement are high and media quality standards are critical. We’re bringing audio into performance-driven environments where advertisers expect accountability, control, and measurable outcomes. Audio must be managed with the same rigor as any other digital format, and measured accordingly.

Across these environments, our measured IVT rate last year remained under 0.5%, a fraction of the industry average. This performance isn’t the result of avoiding complexity, it reflects how media quality is actively managed in environments where fraud incentives are well documented.

In performance-driven categories, protecting media quality in mobile gaming is often the difference between campaigns that scale efficiently and those that quietly underperform.

What Near-Zero IVT Looks Like in Practice

Our approach reflects both a broader industry shift and a deliberate decision to lead it. As IVT has become more sophisticated, we’ve moved away from assumptions and toward active, operational control, particularly in environments where fraud risk is highest.

1. Supply Path Discipline
We apply strict controls over where and how impressions are sourced, particularly within mobile app environments, avoiding long-tail supply paths that prioritize volume over integrity. By limiting exposure to inventory that lacks transparency or accountability, we reduce risk before impressions are ever served.

2. Behavioral and Impression-Level Analysis
As IVT has become more sophisticated, detection has shifted away from static rules toward identifying patterns across multiple behavioral signals over time. We use advanced AI models to evaluate impression-level activity after delivery, paired with daily human review, to distinguish genuine human engagement from activity designed to mimic it.

3. Continuous Verification and Prevention
We treat IVT prevention as an always-on operational discipline. Traffic quality is evaluated continuously, providing deeper insight into how ads are actually experienced in real time. Inventory determined to be invalid is removed before it can distort reporting, optimization models, or advertiser trust.

Clean Media Performs Better

In the era of outcomes, IVT shows up quickly in ROAS, optimization efficiency, and confidence in digital channels. That reality shifts media quality from a hygiene concern to an operational requirement. For retail advertisers running campaigns in mobile gaming across our partner network, that discipline has translated into results: Campaigns delivering 2.5x-11x return on ad spend.

Clean media performs better, and our partners are seeing the impact. 

The urgency around this issue is only increasing. As agentic AI and automation continue to evolve, the line between legitimate and invalid traffic will become harder to detect. In that environment, advertisers can no longer assume that scale equals quality or that platform-reported metrics reliably reflect real human attention.

Protecting media quality in mobile gaming requires active control, and the ability to demonstrate that protection through both integrity metrics and performance outcomes.

The Bottom Line

IVT is a systemic performance issue that quietly drains budgets and degrades decision-making across digital media.

When media is engineered for transparency, behavioral integrity, and real human engagement, near-zero IVT is achievable, even in environments where fraud is common.

In an ecosystem where 8.5% IVT has become the norm, delivering well under 1% isn’t just a technical achievement. It’s proof that disciplined digital media can still deliver what advertisers actually want: Real people, real attention, and real results.