Click fraud

Many ads, especially search ads and affiliate links, are paid per click (CPC). Click fraud exploits that: every fake click costs the advertiser money and may pay someone else.

There are two classic motives. Publishers or traffic sellers inflate clicks on ads on their own sites to earn more. Competitors click a rival's ads to exhaust their daily budget so their own ads show instead. Methods range from simple scripts and click farms to botnets and mobile malware that clicks ads silently. In app marketing, related tricks such as click spamming and click injection aim to steal install credit rather than simply burn budget.

Platforms filter many bad clicks automatically. Google, for instance, defines "invalid clicks" and says it does not charge for clicks it identifies as invalid. Signals include repeated clicks from the same device or IP, clicks with no page engagement afterwards, clicks from data-center IPs, abnormal CTR spikes and clicks arriving faster than a human could react. Advertisers can also watch for traffic that never converts or bounces instantly.

Think of it like this

Click fraud is like a rival florist repeatedly phoning your paid hotline just to run up your bill, with no intention of ever buying flowers.

An example

A plumbing company in Chicago bidding $40 per click sees 90 clicks by 9 a.m., all from IPs in two hosting ranges, none staying on the page more than two seconds. The platform later credits most of them as invalid clicks.