Dive Brief: 

• Solve Media, a company that places ads in captchas, has reported that 51% of all U.S. web traffic was fraudulent in Q3. 
• That figure is an 8% increase from Q2 and the first time fraudulent traffic has hit more than 50%, according to Solve’s Quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory.
• Solve Media also reported an uptick in fraudulent traffic on mobile, going from 22% in Q2 to 27% in Q3. 

Dive Insight:

With all the coverage that bot traffic has been receiving lately, it seems like there might have been a decrease as a result of efforts to combat it. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. The problem is that fraudulent traffic has inflated traffic expectations, which in turn fuels fraudulent traffic. As with all studies, this should be approached with some skepticism, but regardless of the specific numbers, the problem of fraudulent traffic remains.