View Bots: Fake Views, Real Problems

Web traffic is valuable. For influencers, views and subscribers translate into social proof and revenue. This demand for high view counts has led to a booming industry for fake views. The source of these fake views? View bots. These bots can be cheaply hired to inflate viewing figures on various platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok.

What Are View Bots?

View bots are automated programs designed to artificially inflate video view counts. They can be deployed on any platform that plays videos or even music streaming sites. These bots don't just watch the video content; they also interact with media such as banner ads, pre-roll and post-roll video ads, and other paid elements. Due to their complexity, view bots are designed to evade detection by advanced filters on video platforms.

There is a high demand for these bots, making them easily accessible. A simple search for 'view bots' yields hundreds of results. Yes, using view bots violates the Terms of Service (TOS) of most platforms. However, this doesn't deter users from purchasing these affordable bot packages. Many even offer free trials, allowing users to inflate their views without paying upfront.

Why Do People Use View Bots?

View bots are widely used by content creators to artificially inflate their view counts. Here are the main reasons why:

• Increased revenue: More views translate to more money for creators on platforms like YouTube and Twitch.
• Ease of purchase: Services have made it easy for creators to buy view bots for platforms including YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook Live.
• New creators' advantage: New creators use view bots to quickly grow their subscriber base and boost their videos' visibility in platform algorithms.
• Simple setup: Setting up view bots is straightforward, with websites like ViewerLabs and stergomedia providing step-by-step guides.
• Affordability: View bot packages are inexpensive, with options like UseViral offering 10,000 views for just over $100.

While social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch are commonly associated with view bots, other view-based platforms, such as esports sites, are also susceptible. With online entertainment gaining popularity among younger audiences, marketers are turning to streaming services and even metaverse games to run their ad campaigns.

How Do View Bots Affect Advertisers?

View bots have several negative impacts on advertisers:

• Increased costs: In cost-per-mile (CPM) advertising, paying per 1,000 impressions with 15-20% of those impressions being fake leads to significant financial losses.
• Click fraud and ad fraud: These forms of fraud cost the global marketing industry around $40 billion annually and continue to grow.
• Wasted ad spend: Impression fraud depletes your ad budget faster, reducing opportunities for genuine impressions.
• Skewed ad data: Inflated view metrics distort your ad performance data, making ads appear more successful than they actually are.
• Influencer marketing deception: Inflated views artificially boost an influencer's value, leading to misguided investments. An influencer with a few thousand followers, who may have paid for these followers, can mislead marketers about their true influence.

Would you be happy spending your ad budget to target an audience of click farm robots?

Types of View Bots

View bots encompass a variety of automated programs designed to inflate video metrics. Here are some common types:

Live Stream Bots

Live stream bots join Twitch and Facebook live streams to make it appear as if the streamer has a larger audience. The aim is to attract more genuine viewers. Streaming farms, which artificially inflate live stream viewers, are becoming increasingly popular.

Chats and Engagement Bots

To avoid detection, some bots also engage with content. These bots leave comments on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, though the comments are often generic and unconvincing.

Engagement Groups

Engagement groups are not bots but act similarly by using human interactions to boost metrics. Creators join communities where members watch and engage with each other's videos to inflate view counts and engagement. This practice misleads advertisers with low-conversion, non-genuine traffic and can lead to click fraud by inflating ad click rates.

Chat Impersonation Bots

Chat impersonation bots are marketed as prank tools but are often used to increase engagement on live streams and videos. These bots mimic real viewers in chat, further distorting engagement metrics.

Risks for Creators Using View Bots

Using view bots violates the terms of service on major platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Meta (Facebook/Instagram). Consequences for creators include:

• Video removal: Content can be taken down.
• Monetization loss: Creators may lose the ability to monetize their content.
• Platform bans: Permanent bans from the platform are possible.

Twitch is particularly aggressive in combating view botting, including legal actions. For instance, in 2018, Twitch won a $1.37 million lawsuit against Michael and Katherine Anjomi, creators of a view bot.

Trust Issues for Influencers

View bots not only deceive advertisers but also betray real users. Followers often trust creators based on social proof—seeing that many others enjoy the content. When creators are caught using bots, they risk losing this trust along with their content.

A notable example is Pink Sparkles, a Twitch streamer banned after accidentally showing her bot software during a stream. Additionally, around half of Instagram influencers are involved in fraudulent activities like buying subscribers and viewers, which can severely damage their reputation when discovered.

Spotting Fake Profiles and View Bots

Despite the prevalence of view bots, there are ways to identify fake profiles and bots on social media. Keep an eye out for signs of artificial engagement and inflated metrics.

How Can You Spot a View Bot Account?

Here are three quick ways to identify a profile using view bots on any platform:

Low engagement with high views: A major giveaway of fake views is an imbalance between views and engagement. While the average view-to-chat ratio varies across platforms and content types, a video with thousands of views but only a few dozen comments often indicates either heavy promotion or the use of view bots.‍

‍Generic comments: Some advanced and more expensive view bots can also generate comments. However, these comments are typically generic and repetitive. Be wary of comments that require little to no thought and appear frequently, such as:some text

• "I love your stream"
• "Awesome"
• "This looks great"

Low subscriber-to-view ratio

• A realistic YouTube subscriber-to-view ratio is around 8-12%. For example, an account with 10,000 subscribers should typically receive 800 to 1,200 views per video. If a channel with 10,000 subscribers consistently gets around 7,000 views per video, it is likely using view bots to inflate view counts.

What Can You Do About View Bots?

If you advertise on any video-based platform, your ads are likely exposed to view bots to some extent. Considering that 40-50% of all internet traffic is non-human, this poses a significant challenge for marketing budgets. Despite efforts by platforms like YouTube and Twitch to filter out bots, a substantial amount of non-human traffic still slips through. Research from Tapper indicates that an average of 14% of all Google Ads clicks are non-genuine. Similarly, fake profiles, including view bots, account for a significant portion of ad spend on Facebook and Instagram.

Tapper’s industry-leading fraud prevention software can help block bots, including view bots, from affecting your Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube ad campaigns. Whether you're running pre-roll or post-roll video ads, paying for display ads on YouTube, or engaging in any other form of video marketing, using tools to block bots can protect your ad campaign and optimize your budget.