Click fraud
Click fraud is a genre of fraud where bad actors force clicks to increase revenue (in the case of ad networks or publishers/websites) or drain advertising budgets on campaigns that pay out by the click (such as PPC, CPC, CPI, etc.).
What is it?
Click fraud encompasses fraudulent or forced click reporting and can be carried out by both humans and non-human actors posing as legitimate users, but without any intention of following through with a conversion be it purchase, subscription, install, or something else.
Common types include forced clicks, fraudulent clicks such as bot clicks, click flooding, click injection, click redirection, mislabeled clicks from incentivized campaigns, and the misreporting of impressions and video views reported as clicks.
These scams will often target CPC and CPI campaigns.
