Stop ad fraud on open exchange programmatic
Open exchange inventory carries the highest fraud rates in all of programmatic advertising. Bot networks, domain spoofers, and click farms target the bid stream directly, burning your budget on impressions that never reach a real person. Tapper gives you impression-level protection across every open exchange buy.
Trusted by leading brands worldwide
Open exchange fraud is structural, not incidental
The open exchange RTB environment is designed for speed and scale. Auctions settle in under 100 milliseconds, bid requests carry self-declared publisher information that is not independently verified at auction time, and access to inventory is available to a very wide range of buyers and sellers. Those same features that make open exchange programmatic attractive for reach and cost efficiency also make it the highest-fraud environment in digital advertising. Industry estimates consistently place invalid traffic rates on open exchange inventory between 20 and 40 percent of all impressions served.
The fraud landscape on the open exchange is not a single problem but a layered one. Domain spoofing misrepresents where your ad is actually served. Bot traffic generates impressions from non-human sources that inflate your reach metrics. Click farms use real devices to produce fraudulent engagement that passes basic bot filters. Click stuffing injects hidden interactions to steal attribution credit. All of these operate simultaneously across a typical open exchange buy, and no single detection method addresses them all. Standard brand safety tools, which screen content at the domain level, are blind to every one of these traffic-quality threats.
The downstream consequences go beyond wasted impressions. When your DSP optimises delivery based on signals contaminated by bot clicks, click farm engagement, or stuffed interactions, its audience models shift toward inventory and traffic patterns that do not correspond to real buyers. Frequency caps are consumed by invalid interactions, reducing reach against genuine audiences. Attribution paths are polluted by injected clicks, understating the contribution of channels that genuinely drove conversions. Tapper monitors every impression and interaction signal across your open exchange buy, filtering invalid traffic before it enters your campaign data and corrupts the signals your DSP depends on.
How Tapper protects your open exchange on Display
Three steps from connection to clean campaign data, no engineering required.
01
Connect your DSP or ad server
Tapper integrates with your demand-side platform or ad server and begins monitoring bid-stream and impression data across your full open exchange inventory. No changes to your campaign setup are required.
02
Invalid traffic detected across every fraud type
IP reputation analysis, device fingerprinting, behavioural scoring, and domain verification run simultaneously on every impression and click event, identifying bots, click farms, domain spoofers, and click stuffing in real time.
03
Campaign data protected and inventory suppressed
Invalid signals are excluded from your campaign reporting and DSP learning data. High-fraud inventory sources are added to ongoing suppression lists, reducing fraud exposure with every campaign cycle.
Open exchange fraud by the numbers
Data from Tapper's platform analysis and published industry research.
20-40%
Average IVT rate on open exchange inventory
$84B
Lost to ad fraud globally each year
3x
Higher fraud on open exchange vs private marketplace
Tapper vs Standard Brand Safety Tools
See exactly where the gaps are, and why they matter to your campaign performance.
Bot traffic detection
Behavioural and fingerprint analysis per impression
Known-bad IP and domain lists only
Domain spoofing protection
Impression-level domain verification against seller records
Declared domain screened, spoofing not detected
Click farm identification
Device cluster and session-pattern analysis
Not detectable with standard tools
Click stuffing detection
Interaction-level analysis separating genuine from injected clicks
No click injection detection
DSP signal protection
Filters invalid signals before campaign optimisation
No pre-optimisation filtering
Inventory suppression
Automated and updated continuously
Manual blocklist management
Attribution correction
Removes fraudulent clicks from multi-channel attribution paths
No attribution-layer protection
Fraud detection speed
Under 3 seconds per event
Post-campaign batch review
Trusted by industry leaders
See how companies are protecting their ad budgets and improving ROI with Tapper.
“Tapper played a key role in improving the efficiency of Du's performance marketing activity by addressing traffic quality issues within campaigns. Following implementation, Du achieved a 13% reduction in CPA and an 8.6% increase in order rate, demonstrating a clear improvement in conversion quality and overall campaign effectiveness.”
Joseph Elbcherrawy
Client Leadership Director, Mindshare, a WPP Media Brand
“During our Tapper trial for INFINITI, we uncovered low-quality traffic that wasn't visible inside the platforms. Removing it delivered a 14% uplift in conversions and an 11.4% reduction in CPA - a meaningful efficiency gain for INFINITI's 2026 growth plans.”
David Barnes
Data & Technology Lead, Omnicom Group
“With Tapper's protection we were able to identify and block invalid clicks in real time. The impact was immediate as our cost per acquisition dropped by 30% and ROAS improved significantly. More importantly, Tapper gives us the confidence that our campaigns are reaching genuine customers, which makes it truly invaluable.”
Dimitris Bakas
Senior Performance Marketing, Public Group
“We started using Tapper to get better visibility on where our clicks were coming from, and ended up cutting wasted spend by over 12%. The performance uplift was clear, and for the first time, we could trust the numbers we were seeing. It's a total game-changer for campaign integrity.”
Stuart Parkin
Director of Operations, Regit
“Tapper's blocking technology purifies our paid media traffic which roughly equates to a 36x return against its subscription costs. It's certainly one of the easiest-to-implement tools in our entire marketing stack.”
Reno Mindemann
Head of Growth, Kama Capital
“We've been using Tapper for over a year now, and it has become a core part of how we run paid media. Invalid traffic was always something we knew existed but couldn't really act on. Tapper changed that. We're now saving up to $50K per year, and on PureSquare specifically, we saw around a 20% decrease in CPA. Based on these results, we decided to roll it out across other ventures under Disrupt as well.”
Nurkan Kirkan
GTM Consultant / Paid Growth, Disrupt.com
Trusted by leading brands worldwide
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about protecting your open exchange on Display & Programmatic.
The open exchange RTB auction model processes bids at millisecond speed using self-declared publisher information. There is no real-time independent verification of the declared domain, traffic source, or audience quality at auction time. Any buyer with DSP access can bid on open exchange inventory, and any seller with SSP access can list inventory, creating a very low barrier to entry for fraudulent operators. The combination of speed, scale, and minimal gatekeeping makes open exchange the primary target for ad fraud operations.
The most prevalent fraud types on the open exchange are domain spoofing, bot traffic (both GIVT and SIVT), click farms, and click stuffing. Domain spoofing misrepresents which publisher's inventory is being sold. Bot traffic inflates impression counts with non-human traffic. Click farms use real devices to generate fraudulent engagement. Click stuffing injects hidden interactions to steal attribution credit. These fraud types often operate together through the same fraudulent publishers.
DSPs apply basic fraud filters, including known bot lists and some domain verification, but these are general measures that catch straightforward invalid traffic. They are not designed to detect sophisticated fraud types such as residential proxy networks, real-device click farms, or click stuffing. DSPs also have a commercial interest in delivering impressions, which creates a structural tension with aggressive fraud filtering. Dedicated protection like Tapper operates independently of that commercial dynamic.
Tapper integrates with the major demand-side platforms, including DV360, The Trade Desk, Xandr, and custom ad server setups. Our team can advise on the best integration path for your specific programmatic stack and inventory mix.
Most advertisers see measurable reduction in invalid traffic rates within the first campaign cycle after deployment. As suppression lists are built from your specific buying patterns, fraud exposure typically declines further over subsequent campaigns. Tapper provides ongoing reporting so you can track fraud rates and clean traffic delivery across your open exchange inventory.
Open exchange inventory can deliver real scale and cost efficiency for brand awareness and prospecting campaigns when fraud is actively filtered. The problem is not the open exchange itself but the absence of independent traffic-quality monitoring that most advertisers currently operate without. With Tapper in place, open exchange buying delivers the reach you are paying for rather than the reach your DSP reports.
Other campaign types on Display & Programmatic
Each campaign type has its own fraud patterns. Tapper covers them all on Display.
Stop paying for fraud on Display open exchange
Book a demo and we will show you exactly what Tapper would block on your account, before you commit to anything.