[shiftingleft]

  After we implemented advanced bot traffic detection and filtering, their reported traffic plummeted by 71%. [...]
  But then the sales report came in. Their actual sales went up by 34%.
  Their real conversion rate optimization (CRO) efforts had been working all along, but the results were buried under an avalanche of fake clicks. They were not bad at marketing; they were just spending thousands of dollars advertising to robots programmed never to buy anything. Their marketing ROI went from "terrible" to "excellent" overnight.

I don't understand how detecting bot traffic would directly lead to less ad spend.

Can you just tell e.g. Google Ads that you don't want to pay for certain clicks?

Did they modify their targeting to try to avoid bots?

[V__]

I could imagine that blocking bot traffic, would improve their retargeting and make sure that the retargeting budget is spent on real people leading to an increase in conversion.

[shiftingleft]

What's the API here for Google Ads? How does their site report to Google Ads whether that was a good/bad user? Is this done through conversion tracking? If so, why would you track anything but a completed purchase in the first place?

[V__]

I think Google calls it remarketing and it goes through Google Tag Manager. You can "tag" visitors how you want (duration, action, page scroll, etc.). It's just a javascript call to the API which you can trigger however you like.

You wouldn't necessarily want to track conversions for retargeting, since depending on your product or service, a second buy might be unlikely. But someone who checks out multiple product pages or articles on your site might be interested and buy in the near future. That of course are also actions bots could easily do.

[morkalork]

If you building look-alike or remarketing audiences, having any bot users in there could give the wrong signal to Facebook or other platforms.

>Can you just tell e.g. Google Ads that you don't want to pay for certain clicks?

No

[maroon_unperson]

Sites send conversion events back to Google so they can target highly converting traffic.

If a bot network hits all the conversing events then Google will tailor the traffic to look more like the bot network.

If you filter the bot traffic out then Google can tailor the traffic to look like real converting users instead.

[nemomarx]

I assume it's the filtering - detect the user is a bot, don't even load the ads, etc?

[shiftingleft]

As I understand it they are placing ads on other sites and are paying for visits to their site.

[weird-eye-issue]

You didn't think through this did you

How would you do that on Google or a third-party site?