Besides stealing information and running up ad budgets, these programs are also becoming increasingly sophisticated. They can now mimic human behavior, making it harder than ever for marketers to block bots by just looking at their actions.
Consider that these bad bots made up 27.7% of all global website traffic in 2021, up from 25.6% in 2020. Additionally, evasive bots – bots that skirt around standard security measures – make up 65% of all bad bot traffic.
So not only is bot activity increasing online, but a large chunk of these bots are also so advanced that simple measures don’t stop them.