What is click fraud?

Click fraud is a type of ad fraud where an individual or a bot impersonates a legitimate visitor on a webpage and clicks on an ad, a button, or some other type of hyperlink. 

Click fraud doesn’t always involve bots; it can also happen through manual methods, such as click farms. Here are some of the most common examples of click fraud:

• Click farms involve a large groups of typically low-paid workers (in one or multiple locations), who systematically view and interact with ads or content  to inflate metrics, benefiting a third party financially.
• Bot clicks are generated by automated programs designed to execute click fraud. The most straightforward click bots will simply navigate to and click the desired link, but more advanced click bots can also be programmed to take actions that a real user would take–such as scrolling, random click patterns, mouse movements, and time delays–to evade detection. Click bots may be custom built or purchased as-a-service from a gray market provider. Bad actors will often utilize botnets to scale their click bots for more profitable operations.
• Competitor clicks, also known as competitor click fraud, a competitor company clicks on a rival's digital ads to deplete its advertising budget. This can be done manually by competitors or employees using tools like click farms or bots.
• Click injection. In a click injection attack, malicious or compromised apps on a user's device generate fake ad clicks just before a legitimate app installation occurs. This allows fraudsters to take credit for the app install and earn advertising revenue, even though they didn't influence the user's decision to download the app. 

Click fraud wastes performance advertising budgets by generating illegitimate clicks that businesses pay for without receiving genuine user engagement or potential customers. When bots or bad actors click on ads, companies incur costs for interactions that have no potential to lead to sales or conversions. 

A business might allocate $50,000 to a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign expecting to attract interested buyers. If a significant portion of the clicks comes from bots or click farms, a majority of the budget is wasted on fraudulent activity. This means fewer resources are available for genuine marketing efforts that could reach real customers.

Beyond direct financial losses, click fraud undermines a company’s ability to make data-driven decisions. Marketing teams rely on accurate metrics to optimize campaigns, but click fraud distorts these metrics, reducing return on investment (ROI) and weakening overall campaign effectiveness.

Businesses can significantly reduce the impact of click fraud by taking proactive measures. Implementing advanced bot mitigation tools can help track click patterns, identify irregularities, and block bots and bad actors before they impact ad budgets. These tools can alert you of suspicious activity like sudden spikes in clicks from unusual locations or multiple clicks from the same IP address.

In addition to bot mitigation solutions, regularly monitoring your campaign analytics can help with the early detection of suspicious activities.

With HUMAN for Ad Platforms, we offer a powerful solution designed to tackle ad fraud across programmatic channels. Our Ad Fraud Defense provides ad tech platforms with pre-bid controls, enabling real-time prevention of fraudulent activity before ads are served. Powered by our Ad Fraud Sensor, Ad Fraud Defense analyzes signals across display, CTV, and digital audio to detect and mitigate ad fraud, ensuring that programmatic inventory reaches genuine human audiences.