What Is Click Fraud? How To Detect And Prevent Click Fraud

Imagine a brand investing $10K monthly in Google Ads. Thanks to Click Fraud, industry data suggests the brand could lose up to $15K in revenue annually. Every advertiser's goal? Stop click fraud in its tracks before they do. 

Advertisers need to justify ad spend to stakeholders, ensuring every dollar drives real engagement. But with fraudulent clicks inflating numbers and eating into ROI, how can they confidently optimize campaigns? This article breaks down click fraud, its impact, and how to fight back.

What You'll Learn:

• What Is Click Fraud?
• How Does Click Fraud Affect Publishers?
• How Does Click Fraud Hurt Advertisers?
• How To Detect Click Fraud
• How To Prevent Click Fraud

What Is Click Fraud?

Click fraud occurs when fraudsters generate fake clicks on online ads—typically Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads—using automated bots, scripts, or human-powered click farms where people are clicking repeatedly. The goal? Inflate traffic, drain advertiser budgets, and manipulate ad performance metrics.

The results spell trouble for advertisers. These fraudulent activities skew data, making it harder for advertisers to track real engagement. Worse, they’re costly. According to AdAge, for every $3 spent on digital ads, $1 is lost to fraud. A strong advertising strategy combats click fraud head-on with real-time monitoring and detection tools.

Types Of Click Fraud

Here’s a rundown of a few types of click fraud advertisers may encounter and the intent behind these fraudulent activities.  

• Click Bots: Automated programs that rapidly and repeatedly click on ads, driving up costs and distorting performance metrics.
• Pixel Stuffing: A deceptive technique where an ad is invisibly stuffed into a webpage, registering views and clicks without real engagement. This action generates fake revenue, negatively impacting advertisers paying for the slot.
• Click Farms: Groups of low-paid workers who manually click on ads to inflate advertising impressions or site traffic, deceiving advertisers and platforms.
• Competitor Clicks: Brands intentionally click on their competitors' ads to deplete budgets and improve the chances of their own ad performance.

Forbes offers a comprehensive breakdown of digital ad fraud tactics here.

How Does Click Fraud Hurt Advertisers?

Click fraud doesn’t just waste money—it distorts ad data, making it impossible to gauge performance accurately. As with publishers, the negative consequences of click fraud for advertisers include financial and reputational impacts since so much depends on the validity of the ad metrics in conjunction with ad revenue. There isn’t room for waste. 

Key risks include:

• Fake Engagement – Skewed analytics mislead marketers, making it harder to optimize campaigns.
• Budget Drain – Fraudulent clicks rapidly deplete ad spend without driving real conversions.
• Increased Detection Costs – Identifying and mitigating fraud requires investment in monitoring tools and fraud prevention strategies.

All of these factors undermine the effectiveness of ad campaigns to mislead advertisers about audience engagement, which, in turn, impacts strategic planning for optimizing future campaigns. 

Advertisers are already operating in a highly competitive marketplace for top-playing placements. Introducing click fraud activities into this space complicates the delivery of ads and tainting reputations. Hiring the resources to combat click fraud or investing in detection and monitoring tools can further erode ROI. Forbes breaks down 11 Ways agencies are combating click fraud.

On strategy to counteract fraud? Supply Path Optimization (SPO). This approach streamlines ad buying to ensure advertisers work with high-quality publishers and avoid fraudulent networks.

How Does Click Fraud Affect Publishers?

For publishers, reputation is everything.  A website’s ability to consistently attract real users to their websites and deliver quality content and ad experiences directly impacts its credibility. When websites appear to be underdelivering on these promises to users and advertisers, click fraud disrupts this balance by:

• Damaging Reputation – Fraudulent activity can cause advertisers to pull back, reducing trust and future ad deals.
• Skewing Revenue Models – Publishers may get short-term gains from fraudulent clicks but risk long-term penalties, including payment clawbacks.
• Creating Technical Issues – Excess bot traffic can overload servers, slowing down sites and harming user experience.
• Triggering Penalties – Ad networks may restrict ad delivery or even suspend accounts suspected of click fraud.

Publishers must invest in fraud prevention tools and work with trusted ad network partners to maintain ad integrity and protect them from click fraud activity. 

Watch this video here on Wall Street Journal highlighting how online ad fraud happens. 

How To Detect Click Fraud

Once ad campaigns are live, best practice guidelines dictates advertisers take a measured approach to ad performance and monitor performance for red flags:

• High Bounce Rates – A surge in clicks without corresponding engagement.
• Unusual Geographic Patterns – Ads for ski gear getting clicks from tropical regions? A red flag.
• Abnormal Click Trends – Sudden spikes in traffic without matching conversion increases.
• High Clicks on Low-Value Keywords – Fraudsters often target inexpensive keywords to maximize earnings.

Click fraud detection enables advertisers to weed out the good from the suspicious, pinpointing areas to dig deeper. Advertisers can use detection platforms like ClickCease, ClickGuard, and Spider AF to help identify suspicious activity.

We take a multi-pronged approach to ad fraud prevention within the Next Millennium ad network to ensure ultimate brand safety through programmatic ad delivery. 

At Next Millennium, we combat fraud using multiple ad prevention platforms to detect and block fraudulent traffic. Plus, we recommend private marketplace deals (PMPs)—exclusive, curated ad deals that reduce fraud risk and ensure top-tier performance.