How does click fraud happen?
Click fraud occurs when individuals or automated systems intentionally click on online advertisements with the aim of generating fraudulent activity rather than genuine interest in the ad's content. With so much money to be made, the industry has been described as organized crime.
There are several ways in which click fraud can happen:
Manual clicking
Individuals or competitors may manually click on ads repeatedly to exhaust the advertiser's budget, thereby reducing the effectiveness of their campaigns. This can be done to sabotage a competitor's advertising efforts or simply to waste their advertising budget.
Click farms
Click farms are operations where individuals are paid to click on ads or engage with online content. These farms often utilize workers in low-income regions who are paid minimal wages to click on ads for hours and hours, creating the illusion of legitimate traffic.
Bot traffic
Automated programs, or bots, can be programmed to click on ads without human intervention. Bot traffic can be generated for various purposes, including inflating website traffic metrics or depleting competitors' ad budgets. Sophisticated botnets can mimic human behavior, making them difficult to detect.
Ad stacking
Ad stacking involves stacking multiple ads on top of each other within a single ad placement. While only the top ad is visible to users, all ads in the stack receive clicks. This artificially inflates click-through rates and drains advertisers' budgets without providing any genuine engagement.
Domain spoofing
In domain spoofing, fraudsters misrepresent the domain from which an ad is served, making it appear as though it’s displayed on a legitimate website when it is shown on a different site. Advertisers end up paying for clicks on fraudulent placements that generate no actual traffic.