What's the Fraud % in 2023 Q3 Traffic?
How much fraud did Oxford Biochronometrics measure in 2023 Q3’s PAID traffic? In order to provide a clean answer we’ll break down the traffic into two groups: (1) Desktop traffic and (2) Mobile traffic. The ratio is can be seen in figure 1 where desktop traffic is just shy of 20% (1 in 5 visitors) of the total traffic. The other ~80% (4 in 5 visitors) were using a mobile device.
The next paragraphs will break down the traffic into fraud and human by operating systems and browser types.
Desktop traffic
How much fraud did appear (1) during 2023Q3, (2) PAID traffic only, (3) desktop only, (4) measured at the landing page(s)?
The most inner ring in figure 2 contains the total percentages for both groups: fraud and/or human. Each of these groups are broken down to the operating systems and subsequently to the browser which has been used to access a landing page. The percentages in each ring add up to 100%.
Desktop traffic in 2023Q3 had ~33.3% fraud: Exactly 1 in 3 visitors! That is ~6% more than measured during the previous quarter. Almost than (~61%) of desktop fraud presented itself as MS Windows, then Mac OS (~27%) then ChromeOS (~7%) and Linux (~5%). Within the human group different percentages can be seen: ~63% of the traffic is MS Windows, Mac OS (~30%), ChromeOS (~6%) and Linux (~0.3%).
When looking at the browser types the majority of fraud had ‘Windows with Chrome’ as User Agent. This doesn’t mean that those devices are really Windows machines with Chrome, they only claim to be. It can also be seen that volume wise traffic from Linux is ~32 times more likely to be fraudulent (0.17% human vs. 5.28% fraud).
Mobile traffic
Looking only at mobile traffic in 2023Q3, we can see in figure 3 that this type of traffic had ~12.5% fraud, roughly 1 in 8 visitors. An increase of ~3% compared to the previous quarter. It is again a completely different picture compared to desktop traffic in 2023Q3 where 1 in 3 visitors was flagged as fraud. The ratio Android / iOS in human traffic is about 55:45, the exact numbers are: Android (56.39%), iOS (43.61%). The picture changes when looking at fraudulent traffic, where the ratio is 80:20, the exact numbers are: Android (80.57%), iOS (19.43%).
This shows -just like previous quarters- that Android traffic contains more fraud than iOS. Also, nearly all iOS fraud doesn’t originate from real iOS devices. The fraud originates from Android or (special) desktop browsers pretending to be an iOS device by faking the user agent and device fingerprints.
Year-over-Year comparison of the results
Comparing 2023Q3 with the same quarter last year 2022Q3 provides a comparison without seasonal effects. In 2022Q3 the fraud% on desktop (34.71%) is similar to this year’s percentage (33.27%). Looking at mobile traffic shows a different picture. In 2022Q3 fraud on mobile was 19.01% (~1 in 5 visitors), but in 2023Q3 it is 12.5% (1 in 8 visitors).
Conclusion
Knowing that the desktop traffic is only 1/5th of the total volume shows that the desktop fraud percentage is only ~6.5% of the total volume. This is still too much, but not as bad as it looks in the chart. The ~12.5% fraud in mobile traffic is lower than last year’s fraud. It is the result of the following loop: measuring, optimizing campaigns and sources, measuring, optimizing campaigns and sources, etc. [1]
Note: The numbers are based on traffic measured at landing pages, microsites, lead gen forms, digital sales, check-out pages using Oxford Biochronometrics’ SecureLead.
Legend of the donut charts:
🟩 GREEN indicates human MOBILE traffic,
🟦 BLUE indicates human DESKTOP traffic
🟥RED indicates fraudulent traffic, mobile or desktop.
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