Invalid traffic & fraud
Click farm
A click farm is an operation where low-paid workers, or racks of phones, repeatedly click ads, install apps, like posts or watch videos to fake genuine engagement.
A click farm turns clicking into cheap labour. Rooms of workers, sometimes with walls of smartphones, perform the actions that advertisers and platforms pay for or reward: clicking ads, installing and opening apps, following accounts, watching videos, leaving reviews.
Because real people and real devices are involved, click-farm traffic can pass basic bot checks. It is a form of human fraud and is treated as SIVT where it manipulates measurement. It overlaps with device farms, which automate the same phones with scripts, and with incentivized traffic, where people are paid or rewarded to engage.
Detection leans on patterns across many sessions rather than any single click: large clusters of devices on the same Wi-Fi or IP block, identical app-usage sequences, installs that never return on day two, devices with almost no other apps, and engagement concentrated in a few locations regardless of the campaign's target market. For advertisers, the tell is usually downstream: lots of activity, no purchases, and extremely poor retention.
Think of it like this
A click farm is like hiring a hundred people to stand in a queue outside a new restaurant so passers-by think it is popular, even though none of them eat.
An example
An app-install campaign targeting the UK suddenly gets 20,000 installs routed through a single sub-publisher; 95% of the devices share a few IP blocks abroad and fewer than 1% open the app again after a day.
Related terms
Human fraud farms
Human fraud farms are organised groups of paid people who manually perform ad-related actions, such as clicking, installing, watching, signing up or reviewing, to fake genuine consumer engagement.
Device farm
A device farm is a physical collection of real phones or TVs, often racked on walls and controlled by scripts or workers, used to generate fake installs, ad views and engagement.
Click fraud
Click fraud is generating fake or worthless clicks on pay-per-click ads, by bots, paid people or malware, to drain an advertiser's budget or inflate a publisher's earnings.
Incentivized traffic
Incentivized traffic is visits, clicks, installs or ad views from people who were rewarded, with money, points, game currency or perks, to take the action, rather than acting from genuine interest.
Install fraud
Install fraud is faking app installs, or stealing credit for real ones, so that advertisers pay cost-per-install fees for users who do not exist or would have installed anyway.
Sources: MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines Addendum (2020 update)