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Click Fraud

Click fraud is the act of producing clicks or impressions that have no economic value to the advertiser due to malicious intent on the part of the clicker. A click may be fraudulent when the clicker has no intention of converting, giving the advertiser no chance to reap a return on their investment in that click. One motive for engaging in click fraud is direct financial gain. Publishers can make money by inflating clicks on ads that appear on their site. For example, a blogger who posts several ads on his site can profit by using malicious software to automate clicks on his site. He can also hire low cost workers to click his ads. The second most common motive involves creating unfair competitive advantage. Imagine a local real estate agent who seeks to drain her competitor's ad budget by clicking on his ads. Afterwards, her ads show up for users looking for a real estate agent in her city since her competitor has run out of ad budget. This may also mislead her competitor to stop buying particular keywords since the fraudulent clicks will skew the performance of the affected campaigns. Click fraud is a significant concern in online advertising because fraudulent clicks reduce the return on investment (ROI) of an advertiser's campaign.

Note: click fraud is a sub-type of invalid clicks; however, not all invalid clicks are click fraud. Double clicks, traffic from known crawlers, and internal test clicks are invalid and should not be charged to advertisers, but they are not generated with malicious intent and are not captured within the definition of click fraud as a result.

Learn More About Click Fraud:
Anchor Intelligence: Click Fraud Glossary
Anchor Intelligence Traffic Quality Report
IAB Click Measurement Guidelines