A disproportionate volume of internet traffic originates from bots—some 47% in 2022, according to cybersecurity vendor Imperva. The consequences of non-human entities impersonating real human beings are therefore becoming increasingly harder to ignore. These Edgar suit-wearing automated software apps are not just a nuisance for consumers. On the other side of social media platforms, advertisers are asking themselves those same authenticity questions, an issue whose importance is only growing with the bot swarm. Hence the release of a new forecast from UK-based click fraud software vendor Lunio, which predicted advertisers are set to waste $71.4 billion in 2024 on invalid traffic (IVT) stemming from paid media campaigns. Per Lunio, IVT includes “fake users, misattributed accidental clicks, malicious clicks from competing…