Traffic quality management comprises all efforts to improve the return on online advertising. Traffic quality management is relevant for advertisers seeking to reduce costs and improve conversions rates, ad networks seeking to attract and retain advertisers and improve overall eCPM, and publishers seeking to attract quality advertisers, maximize clicks and increase earnings per click.

Why traffic quality management matters

The online ad market in the U.S. alone is approaching $25 Billion and still growing at ~25% annually and like any large, high-growth market is fraught with inefficiencies. Active traffic quality management can minimize and potentially eliminate these inefficiencies.

Minimize poor quality: The easiest to deal with are the unscrupulous players seeking to profit by taking advantage of cracks in the system. Fraudulent and/or poor quality traffic is one way various middlemen can charge fees without delivering associated results. Everyone in the online ecosystem pays for poor traffic quality: advertisers pay real dollars with no chance for positive return, ad networks suffer when advertisers scale back spending or publishers demand higher fees, and publishers generate lower earnings per click and less overall ad revenue when poor quality traffic enters the mix. By managing traffic quality, click fraud can be eliminated and the impact of low-quality traffic can be minimized.

Maximize high quality: Beyond culling out poor traffic sources, there is ample opportunity to optimize the results of high quality traffic through auditing, scoring, and routing for maximum ROI. Traffic that converts poorly for one advertiser could be highly profitable for a different advertiser. Sites that generate little traffic for one network could be hugely successful for another. Providing the means to route traffic appropriately, matching value with price paid, is the goal of traffic quality management.

Traffic quality management is the process of capturing and eliminating click fraud, minimizing unwanted traffic, and routing acceptable traffic appropriately for maximum ROI.