Ad fraud is an evolving threat and no longer linear. It is becoming more advanced everyday with AI and automation also contributing towards speed and scale. What once looked like normal bot activity has now become far more sophisticated, subtle, and harder to distinguish from genuine user behavior.
This sophistication of ad fraud raises a lot of questions in the minds of advertisers, marketers, publishers, brand owners, or anyone involved in the digital advertising ecosystem for that matter.
Hence, the purpose of this blog. To ensure you get answers to the most asked questions about ad fraud in one place. We will talk about everything from what is ad fraud to knowing how to respond to it with clarity and confidence.
Let’s get started.
What is ad fraud?
Ad fraud is an attempt to generate fake, invalid traffic, or low-quality interactions on digital ads to manipulate campaign results. These interactions often appear real on the surface, such as impressions, clicks, leads, and installs, but actually come from bots, emulators, or click farms.
By using various ad fraud techniques, fraudsters exploit payment models like CPM, CPI, or affiliate commissions. As a result, advertisers lose their ad budget on fake trafficand end up optimizing campaigns based on misleading metrics, leading to campaign inefficiency.
What are the different types of ad fraud?
Ad fraud shows up in different forms depending on the campaign objective, platform, pricing model, and even targeting. In case of web campaigns, it commonly appears as fake impressions, invalid clicks, or invalid traffic to exhaust budgets and inflate engagement metrics.
In case of mobile app campaigns, ad fraud is more deeply tied to attribution and installs. Fraudsters exploit CPI and CPA models by generating fake installs, click injections, or install hijacking tactics that claim credit for users who would have installed organically.
In case of affiliate campaigns, it takes the form of fake leads, fake installs, incentivized traffic, cookie stuffing, or unauthorized brand bidding, etc. The intent is to claim payouts without delivering genuine results. This results in poor partner performance, reduced ROI, and loss of trust in affiliate ecosystems.
Who is affected by ad fraud?
Everyone in the digital ecosystem is affected by ad fraud. Marketers and advertisers suffer direct budget losses and are left explaining poor performance and low-quality leads. Legitimate publishers face unfair competition from fraudulent inventory, revenue loss, reputational risk, and even potential network penalties.
Agencies struggle with compromised data that weakens optimization and client trust. Ad networks and platforms risk credibility, higher operational costs, and compliance challenges. Affiliate managers deal with incentive-driven, low-intent users that inflate numbers while damaging long-term brand perception.
How do I know if my campaigns are being affected by ad fraud?
Ad fraud has moved beyond obvious bot techniques that were easier to identify. It has now evolved to mimic real user behaviour. However, to identify if your campaigns are being affected by ad fraud, you must notice the following signals:
- Sudden spikes in traffic or clicks without a proportional increase in conversions or meaningful engagement
- High engagement metrics but low downstream actions such as purchases, sign-ups, or app usage
- Repeated interactions from similar device types, locations, or behavioral patterns that appear “too consistent”
- Abnormally short or uniform session durations that don’t reflect natural browsing behavior
- Leads or installs that fail validation checks, show no post-conversion activity, or quickly drop off
- Campaign performance improving on dashboards while business outcomes continue to decline
Individually, these signals may seem harmless, but they clearly indicate fraudulent or low-quality traffic is manipulating campaign performance.
What is click fraud?
Click fraud is a type of ad fraud technique where bots are used to generate fake or automated traffic clicks on ads without any real interest in the product or service being promoted. These clicks are created to look like genuine user interactions, making them difficult to identify at first glance. These fraudulent clicks also trigger actions like app installs, conversions, or website visits, further masking their true nature.
In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, publishers earn revenue every time an ad is clicked. Fraudsters exploit this model by creating fake websites or placements and artificially inflating click volumes using bots. As a result, advertisers end up paying for invalid clicks that deliver no real value, while fraudulent publishers profit from traffic that was never genuine in the first place.
I often see high clicks but low conversions on my campaigns. Is this ad fraud or just poor performance?
High clicks with low conversions do not always mean ad fraud. In many cases, poor performance can be caused by factors such as ineffective creatives, incorrect targeting, slow or confusing landing pages, or a mismatch between the ad message and the offer.
However, ad fraud becomes a strong possibility when certain patterns start to appear.
- Sudden increase in clicks without any changes in targeting, creatives, or budgets.
- Clicks with little to no intent-driven actions such as form fills, purchases, or meaningful engagement.
- Clicks coming from repeated IP addresses or devices.
The key is to look at behavioural signals to identify click fraud. Single metrics can be misleading, but consistent patterns of activity without business outcomes often signal something deeper than normal performance issues.
Do ad platforms like Google and Meta already block ad fraud? How to prevent invalid traffic from Google?
Yes, ad platforms like Google and Meta do have built-in systems to detect and block ad fraud. They do filter out a significant amount of invalid activity. However, these platforms operate in a closed ecosystem as walled gardens, hence posing limitations. This means advertisers have limited visibility into how traffic is generated, how users behave beyond surface metrics, and how fraud decisions are made.
This lack of transparency creates blind spots. Fraudsters exploit these gaps using bots, click farms, and automated scripts that mimic real user behavior closely enough to bypass platform-level checks. As a result, some fraudulent clicks still pass through, inflating costs, distorting performance data, and reducing overall ROI, often without advertisers realizing it in time.
Click fraud impacts search campaigns in walled gardens. Know how to protect here.
Do click fraud software or click fraud tools actually work?
A click fraud software is definitely effective, but its impact depends largely on the level of detection it provides. Basic tools that rely only on IP blocking or simple rule-based filters often struggle to keep up with modern ad fraud, which frequently uses rotating IPs, real devices, and human-like behaviour. In such cases, fraud may continue while appearing “under control” on the surface.
More advanced solutions go beyond blocking clicks. They focus on validating traffic quality by analyzing behaviour across the entire user journey, before and after the click, and identifying patterns that do not align with genuine user intent. When implemented correctly, such solutions help protect budgets, preserve data integrity, and ensure that campaign optimization is driven by real users rather than fraudulent activity.
Read more to know what features an advertiser must prioritize in a click fraud prevention tool.
Apart from blacklisting publishers, what other measures can advertisers take to improve traffic quality?
While blacklisting known fraudulent publishers is a useful first step, to further improve overall traffic quality, advertisers can take measures such as:
- Analyzing user behavior beyond clicks, focusing on engagement depth, session patterns, and post-conversion activity
- Monitoring traffic anomalies across devices, locations, and time patterns to identify inconsistencies early
- Validating conversions and leads to ensure they reflect genuine user intent rather than automated actions
- Regularly reviewing placement and source performance instead of relying solely on aggregated platform reports
- Protecting optimization signals by ensuring only high-quality traffic influences bidding and targeting decisions
However, as ad fraud tactics evolve and rotate rapidly, these measures work best when supported by an advanced ad fraud detection solution that continuously validatestraffic in real time and provides proactive protection, rather than reacting after damage is already done.
What is mobile ad fraud?
Mobile ad fraud refers to fraudulent activities that exploit mobile advertising campaigns by generating fake clicks, installs, or in-app actions. These tactics often involve bots, emulators, or manipulated devices that imitate real user behaviour to claim ad spend or attribution credit.
While the immediate impact appears as wasted budget at the top of the funnel, the damage extends much further. Fraudulent mobile traffic distorts attribution models, pollutes user quality data, and misguides optimization algorithms. It also affects retention, lifetime value, and return on ad spend, making it one of the most damaging forms of ad fraud for app-driven businesses.
Understand how mobile ad fraud impacts ROAS & LTV and what marketers can do about it.
What is click spamming?
Also known as click flooding, click spamming is a type of mobile ad fraud where the fraudsters generate an inflated number of fake clicks. The agenda is to receive creditsfor the last click before a conversion is made. By stealing the last attributed credit, the fraudsters fool the advertisers with fraudulent clicks and steal their marketing budget.
In click spamming, the fraudsters generate thousands of clicks at one time to fool the MMPs into misattributing the clicks, which further results in the payout for fraudsters. In addition to this, it also impacts the marketing data of advertisers. As a result, the advertisers continue to allocate their budget to ad campaigns that don’tdrive any real traffic or conversion.
What is click injection?
Click injection is a sophisticated form of click-spamming, which is majorly prevalent in Android devices. When a user downloads a malicious app, they allow fraudsters to detect when any other app is downloaded on a device.
Once they know that, fraudsters trigger a click before an install is completed. As a result, the fraudster receives a credit for the install that appears legitimate and results in a CPI payout from the advertiser.
What are the best practices to avoid install fraud when running app campaigns?
Here’s what marketers can do to reduce install fraud in mobile app campaigns.
- Track user behavior beyond installs by monitoring post-install engagement and retention rather than focusing only on install counts.
- Analyze click-to-install timing patterns (CTIT) and flag unusually short or repetitive trends that don’t align with genuine behavior.
- Review source, device, and geographic patterns regularly to identify irregular spikes from specific channels.
- Avoid scaling aggressively until traffic quality is validated.
These practices help ensure installs are real before they influence attribution, optimization, and budget decisions. However, advertisers need an advanced mobile ad fraud detection solution to ensure all these practices result in meaningful results.
Read more here to learn how you can solve install fraud using an ad fraud solution.
Are ad fraud solutions really effective? How does an ad fraud solution work?
Yes, ad fraud solutions are truly effective when they don’t just block obvious bot traffic but also identify sophisticated bot practices and block them proactively to reduce ad fraud. Here’s how an advanced ad fraud solution actually works:
- Monitors traffic proactively across channels to spot unusual or suspicious activity early
- Checks user behavior after the click, such as engagement, installs, or conversions, to confirm if the traffic is genuine
- Filters out fraudulent data so fake traffic does not influence campaign optimization or bidding
- Blocks repeat offenders automatically, including suspicious devices, IPs, or sources
- Provides clear insights and alerts, helping advertisers take timely action
- The right solution helps in protecting ad budgets, improving traffic quality, and ensuring campaigns are optimized using real user data.
Know how a full-funnel, omnichannel ad fraud detection approach works.
Conclusion
It’s 2026, and ad fraud is more prevalent than ever across the digital ecosystem. Every day, fraudsters are coming up with new techniques to defraud advertisers and steal their ad budget. However, to protect your ad campaigns from sophisticated bots and advanced fraud techniques, it is essential to partner with an ad fraud detection & prevention solution provider like mFilterIt.
We use the capabilities of AI, ML, and data science to detect invalid traffic on your ad campaigns and take real-time action to ensure cleaner traffic.
To know how we combat ad fraud, get in touch with our experts today!
