Invalid Traffic Filtering
Invalid Traffic Filtering: Reach Real Devices, Not Ghosts
Your campaign reports millions of unique impressions — but how many are real people? Flamingo removes invalid traffic, duplicate ad IDs and ghost devices so your reach figures reflect genuine humans, not inflated device graphs.
Why Your Reach Numbers Lie
Invalid traffic doesn't just waste budget — it corrupts the metrics you use to make every downstream decision.
Inflated Device Graphs
Up to 38 mobile ad IDs can map to one real person. Your "unique reach" is really the same individual counted over and over.
Ghost Devices
Phantom and dormant device profiles absorb impressions that no human will ever see, quietly draining your media budget.
Stale Profiles
Location and audience data months out of date sends your brand to the wrong people entirely — valid on paper, invalid in reality.
How Flamingo Eliminates Invalid Traffic
We target verified devices only, so every impression counts once, against one real person.
AI/ML Traffic Filtering
Our models strip out more than 50% of traffic data — bots, ghost devices and stale audiences — before a single impression is served.
Verified MAID Targeting
We deliver to verified, real device IDs only — no duplicate MAIDs, no phantom devices — so reach and frequency reflect genuine humans.
Live, Fresh Intent Data
Real-time intent signals replace stale profiles, so you reach people who are genuinely in-market right now — not who they were months ago.
Accurate reach, real frequency
When every device is verified, every metric can be trusted
Deduplicated, verified delivery means your reach, frequency and cost-per-real-person finally reflect reality — and your budget compounds into a first-party audience you own.
See verified media spend in actionInvalid Traffic FAQs
What is invalid traffic (IVT)?
Invalid traffic is any ad traffic that doesn't represent a genuine, unique human opportunity. It spans general invalid traffic (GIVT) such as known bots and data-centre traffic, and sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) such as ghost devices, duplicate mobile ad IDs and hijacked sessions engineered to evade basic filters.
How can one person show up as many devices?
Ad platforms can hold up to 38 mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) for a single real person. Campaigns then report millions of 'unique' reach while actually hitting the same individual dozens of times across ghost and duplicate device profiles — inflating reach and destroying frequency control.
How does Flamingo filter invalid traffic?
We verify traffic at the device level and target only verified MAIDs, removing duplicate identifiers, ghost devices and stale profiles before delivery. The result is accurate, deduplicated reach against real people — with frequency you can actually trust.
Why does invalid traffic matter if impressions still get served?
Because served impressions against ghost or duplicate devices produce no business outcome. Filtering IVT means your frequency caps, reach figures and cost-per-real-person all reflect reality, so optimisation decisions are based on genuine performance rather than inflated metrics.
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