How Empire Solar Eliminated Bot Traffic to Supercharge Its Growth

MIDDLETOWN, Del. – April 14, 2026 – As businesses pour billions into digital advertising, a silent threat is siphoning away their investments and corrupting their data. For Empire Solar, a residential solar installer based in New York, this threat became an existential crisis when up to 40% of its daily leads were discovered to be fraudulent. The company’s growth stalled, its sales team was overwhelmed, and its marketing budget was evaporating. However, by integrating a real-time ad fraud solution, the company not only staunched the bleeding but eliminated bot submissions entirely, providing a powerful case study in the fight for data integrity.

Empire Solar recently announced that its partnership with ad fraud solution provider Anura has resulted in the complete eradication of fraudulent bot traffic from its lead generation forms. The results were immediate and dramatic: within the first week of implementation, bot submissions plummeted to zero, a level that has been maintained for over two years, allowing the solar installer to focus its resources exclusively on genuine homeowners.

Ad Fraud's Multi-Billion Dollar Drain

The problem Empire Solar faced is far from unique. Digital ad fraud is a pervasive and costly issue plaguing industries worldwide. According to industry research, the global cost of ad fraud reached an estimated $88 billion in 2023, with some projections suggesting this figure could soar to $172 billion by 2028. This means that for every dollar spent on digital campaigns, a significant portion—in some cases, over 25%—is lost to invalid traffic generated by bots and other fraudulent schemes.

This fraudulent activity does more than just waste money. It contaminates marketing data, causing advertising platforms to optimize campaigns around fake clicks and conversions. This leads marketers to make poor strategic decisions based on misleading performance metrics. For sales teams, particularly in high-touch industries, the operational cost is immense. Call centers become bogged down chasing ghosts, and employee morale suffers as agents waste time on leads that were never real people.

Bad bots, automated programs designed for malicious activities, are a primary culprit. Recent reports indicate that these bots account for over 30% of all internet traffic, relentlessly scraping websites, attempting to hack accounts, and filling out lead forms with fake information. For companies that rely on a steady stream of high-quality leads, this automated onslaught can quickly derail growth.

A Solar Company's Battle with Bad Data

For residential solar installers like Empire Solar, the stakes are exceptionally high. The cost to acquire a single lead in the competitive solar market can range from $40 to over $1,000, depending on the location and lead quality. With conversion rates for even the best leads often falling below 10%, lead quality is the single most important factor for achieving a positive return on investment.

As Empire Solar scaled its digital marketing efforts to expand its reach in New York's Hudson Valley, it found itself drowning in fake submissions. At its peak, fraudulent traffic accounted for 40% of all incoming leads. The company’s manual filtering methods, which many businesses rely on, proved incapable of keeping pace with the sophisticated and high-volume bot attacks. The constant influx of junk data overwhelmed the call center and distorted the feedback loop to its advertising platforms, which began to favor the very channels that were delivering the fraudulent traffic.

“Anura is one of my favorite tools in our tech stack,” said Mike Kusmann, Marketing Director at Empire Solar, in a statement. “My team hasn't seen a bot lead in two years, and our call center can focus entirely on real homeowners.”

The Real-Time Solution and Its Impact

To reclaim control, Empire Solar turned to Anura, a solution designed to evaluate and block fraudulent traffic in real-time. Unlike reactive methods that filter leads after they have already been collected and paid for, Anura’s technology identifies and stops bots before they can submit a form. This prevents fraudulent data from ever entering the client's system, ensuring a completely clean dataset from the start.

The integration was swift, and the impact was immediate. According to the company, bot submissions dropped by 100% within the first week. This clean break from fraudulent traffic triggered a cascade of positive outcomes across the organization. The call center’s efficiency skyrocketed as sales representatives were no longer wasting valuable time and resources chasing nonexistent homeowners. This allowed them to dedicate their full attention to nurturing genuine prospects, improving both conversion rates and morale.

Furthermore, by feeding the ad platforms with 100% valid conversion data, Empire Solar’s campaigns became smarter and more effective. The algorithms began optimizing toward real customer signals, driving down the cost per acquisition and improving overall campaign performance. The company was finally able to see the true return on its ad spend and make strategic decisions with confidence.

The Long-Term ROI of Clean Data

Several years into the partnership, Empire Solar reports that bot traffic remains virtually nonexistent. This sustained protection is critical in an environment where fraudsters are constantly evolving their tactics. By investing in a robust defense, the company has insulated its marketing investments and operational resources from the rising tide of digital fraud.

Anura’s effectiveness is bolstered by its industry-first 99.999% Accuracy Guarantee, which ensures that legitimate visitors are not inadvertently blocked—a common and costly side effect of less sophisticated anti-fraud tools. Anura has also earned the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) Certified Against Fraud seal for seven consecutive years, an independent validation of its commitment to maintaining the highest standards in fraud detection.

For Empire Solar, a company that has completed over 7,000 installations, ensuring the integrity of its lead generation pipeline is fundamental to its mission of making solar accessible. By eliminating the noise of fraudulent traffic, the company can now operate with the assurance that every lead represents a real homeowner and every marketing dollar is invested in genuine growth.