What it is
In paid search and display you pay per click. Click fraud is clicks with no commercial meaning: they come not from potential customers but from bots, scripts, click farms or competitors. The money is charged at the full rate and no enquiry ever arrives.
The types
| Who | How and why |
|---|---|
| Bots and scripts | mass automated clicks, inflation, scraping |
| Click farms | people and devices paid to click |
| Competitors | burning your budget to squeeze you out of the auction |
| Unscrupulous publishers | inflating clicks on ads to raise their own payout |
What it costs
In competitive verticals the share of fraudulent and junk traffic reaches 15-30% of the budget. Telling a bot from a human in the first place is covered in how to tell a bot from a human in advertising, and the equivalent problem on affiliate programmes is in fraud in CPA affiliate programmes.
What to do about it
A one-off cleanup helps only briefly — the operators rotate IPs and placements faster than anyone can block them by hand. What works is automated blocking in real time, before the click is charged. On our side that is Stitex ad protection, which scores every click as it happens.
Frequently asked questions
Is click fraud the same as invalid traffic?
Broadly yes — click fraud is the deliberate part of what ad platforms call invalid traffic: clicks on your ads that you pay for and that were never going to become customers.
Who actually does it?
Three groups: bots and automated scripts; click farms, meaning people and devices paid to click; and competitors burning your budget to push you out of the auction. On top of that, unscrupulous publishers inflate clicks on ads to raise their own revenue.
Can click fraud be eliminated completely?
Not completely — it is an arms race. But continuous automated protection cuts out the overwhelming majority and recovers the 15-30% of budget that otherwise disappears.