A few years ago, a globally recognised brand cut two-thirds of its annual online advertising budget around $100 million. What happened next revealed a shocking truth about the digital advertising industry.
There was little to no drop in performance. Conversions held steady, demand didn’t collapse, and the business continued as usual. The reason wasn’t efficiency; it was ad fraud and the brand that showed the mirror to the world was Uber.
Fast forward to 2026, and the problem has only become more complex.
If you are investing in paid media in 2026, it’s important to know that your PPC campaigns may already be exposed to highly sophisticated fraud tactics, many of them powered by advancements in AI. What once started as a side effect of digital advertising has now evolved into a deeply embedded part of the ecosystem marketers operate in today.
According to the recent Imperva report, automated traffic surpassed human activity for the first time in a decade, accounting for 51% of all web traffic in 2024. This surge has been driven by the rapid adoption of AI and large language models (LLMs), which have made bot creation easier, cheaper, and far more scalable.
The challenge is even more pronounced in PPC campaigns within walled gardens, where limited transparency and closed ecosystems make fraud harder to detect.
This click fraud guide serves as a practical framework to help you understand how modern click fraud works and how to act against it effectively.
What is Click Fraud
Click fraud is a fraudulent practice of triggering repeated clicks on online advertisements to give a false idea of performance (augmented number of impressions and clicks), generating unfair revenue for publishers and draining budgets of advertisers allocated to PPC campaigns ad budgets of advertisers. To generate fake clicks, fraudsters put bots in action or hire low-paid workers to click on ads repeatedly.
The problem becomes bigger in affiliate campaigns when brands trust their affiliates. but they become the one causing major attribution problem through simpler and sophisticated fraud tactics that we are going to cover further.
Types of Click Fraud
Click fraud is broadly classified into two main categories, both aimed at creating a false sense of campaign performance. For brands running PPC campaigns across web and app environments, fraud can occur at every level, sometimes in obvious, low-effort forms, and other times through highly sophisticated methods that closely mimic real user behavior.
Following are some of the common click fraud types –
Click Farms
Click farms use large groups of low-paid workers who are instructed to manually click on ads or perform specific actions like visiting a page for a fixed time or installing an app. Since real people carry out these activities, the traffic looks more genuine than bot traffic and can easily slip past basic fraud detection systems.
Competitor Clicks
In this type of fraud, competitors intentionally click on your ads to drain your advertising budget and reduce your campaign’s effectiveness. These repeated, non-genuine clicks increase costs without any real intent to convert, pushing your ads out of auctions faster and lowering overall ROI.
Advanced Click Fraud
Fraud used to be easy to spot—repetitive patterns, sudden spikes, and low-quality traffic. But AI has changed the click fraud landscape. Now, bots can mimic real users and generate fake clicks in web and app campaigns.
Bots can now mimic real users, triggering fake clicks across paid campaigns in web and app environments. In fact, reports show bot activity has risen for the sixth consecutive year, with 37% of all internet traffic now being bot driven. Following are the tactics through which bots trigger fake clicks –
Headless Browser Bots
These are advanced bots that operate within real browser environments, allowing them to behave like human users. They can scroll pages, click ads, and spend time on sites, making their activity difficult to distinguish from genuine traffic and harder for basic fraud tools to detect.
Click Injection
In click injection fraud, advanced bots trigger a fake “last click” on a user’s device just moments before an app is installed. This tactic mainly targets app campaigns, where the fraudster steals the credit for the install, even though they played no real role in driving the user to install the app.
Botnets
Botnets are large networks of infected devices controlled remotely by fraudsters. These devices generate fake clicks, installs, or impressions from different IP addresses, locations, and devices, making the traffic appear distributed and legitimate.
Incent Fraud
Here, users are rewarded with points, money, or other benefits for clicking ads, installing apps, or completing tasks, attracting incentivized traffic. While real users are involved, they have no genuine interest in the brand, leading to low-quality traffic and poor conversion outcomes.
Read in detail about incent fraud and its impact
Domain Spoofing
In domain spoofing, bots disguise low-quality or fraudulent websites as well-known, trusted domains. This makes the traffic appear premium, misleading advertisers into paying higher prices for inventory that has little or no real value.
Read in detail about how AI enables fraud and yet AI is the only defense
How Click Fraud Impacts Advertisers?
The impact of click fraud is not limited to merely one aspect of marketing funnel, it extends beyond that impacting the entire funnel. Following are the ways in which it largely impacts advertisers –
Ad budget is consumed by fake clicks
Money is spent on bots or hired click farms instead of real users. For example, a campaign with a ₹1,000 daily budget may exhaust it by noon due to fraudulent clicks, stopping ads from reaching genuine prospects later in the day.
Cost-per-click (CPC) increases artificially
Repeated fake clicks raise competition signals in ad auctions, pushing CPCs higher. Advertisers end up paying more for the same keywords without any improvement in conversions.
Sales teams chase fake or low-quality leads
Click fraud often generates invalid leads or empty form fills. Sales teams spend time calling numbers that don’t connect or emails that never respond, reducing productivity.
Geographic and device targeting get distorted
Bots often operate from specific locations or devices. Advertisers may mistakenly block or scale down regions or audiences that appear “low quality” but are actually victims of fraud traffic.
Reduced ROI and campaign scalability
Even high-intent campaigns fail to scale because fraud eats incremental budget. Performance plateaus not due to market saturation, but due to invalid traffic.
Bottom of the Funnel Impact of Click Fraud
The entire marketing funnels comes under attack when click fraud happens and its bottom of the funnel impact is much more distorted –
- High CTR, Low Conversions: Fake clicks inflate CTR but don’t convert, making real installs, sign-ups, and purchases look weaker.
- Skewed Optimization Signals: Bots pollute retargeting pools, causing platforms to optimize for low-quality audiences.
- Misleading Attribution & ROAS: Fraud distorts performance data, leading to wrong decisions and direct revenue loss.
Read in detail about How ad fraud impacts bottom of the funnel metrics and how to regain the control
Signs to Identify Click Fraud
Click fraud has become much more sophisticated now. However, following are the early warning identifying which brands can tackle click fraud –
- High CTR with low-quality sessions: Clicks increase, but bounce rates are high, session duration is very low, and there are no meaningful actions like add-to-cart, sign-ups, or installs.
- Repeated clicks with no conversions: The same users or devices click ads multiple times but never complete any conversion event.
- Unusual concentration of traffic: A large share of clicks comes from a single city, IP range, OS version, device model, or carrier, without matching business outcomes.
- Traffic spikes at unlikely times: Sudden surges in clicks during late nights, early mornings, or outside normal buying hours for your audience.
- No post-click behavior: Users land on the page but don’t scroll, tap, zoom, or move to another page—clear signs of automated or incentivized activity.
- Affiliate or publisher-level anomalies: Certain affiliates drive high volumes of clicks or installs but show zero retention, repeat usage, or downstream conversions.
How to Solve Click Fraud Problem
Advertisers increasingly rely on advanced invalid ad traffic detection techniques to separate genuine user activity from invalid clicks or manipulated traffic, ensuring campaign data stays reliable and budgets are used effectively. One such approach is to utilize advanced ad fraud solution like Valid8 by mFilterIt that strengthens brands with a comprehensive
Filtering out fake or spoofed devices
Modern detection systems analyse signals such as browser behaviour, device configuration, and operating system patterns to identify traffic that doesn’t resemble real user activity. Devices that show signs of automation or spoofing can be excluded, so performance metrics reflect only authentic engagement.
Verifying whether clicks come from the intended locations
Geographic inconsistencies are a common indicator of fraudulent activity. By comparing click locations against the campaign’s target regions, suspicious traffic from irrelevant or unexpected geographies can be flagged and prevented before it distorts results.
Improving visibility into traffic sources
Clear insight into where clicks originate across sites, apps, and platforms, makes it easier to evaluate traffic quality. This level of transparency helps advertisers prioritise high-performing, trustworthy placements while reducing exposure to low-quality or fraudulent sources.
Identifying and controlling incentivized traffic
Detection systems monitor user behaviour patterns to identify traffic driven by rewards rather than real interest. Users who repeatedly perform actions only to earn incentives without meaningful engagement can be filtered out early, ensuring campaign performance reflects genuine intent.
Achieving source-level transparency
By breaking down traffic at the source, sub-source, and placement level, advertisers gain a clear view of exactly where clicks and installs are coming from. This makes it easier to spot abnormal patterns, isolate risky partners, and limit exposure to fraudulent or low-quality sources.
Monitoring performance across the full funnel
Instead of judging success on clicks alone, full-funnel tracking analyses how users behave after the click—from landing page engagement to conversion and retention. Traffic that drops off early or never reaches key milestones can be flagged and excluded.
Protecting campaigns across channels with omnichannel coverage
Fraud rarely stays confined to a single channel. Omnichannel monitoring connects web, app, search, social, and affiliate data, helping advertisers detect cross-channel fraud patterns and maintain consistent protection across their entire media mix.
How mFilterIt solves click fraud?
mFilterIt detects click fraud by validating every click in real time and identifying patterns that indicate manipulation. Using device and traffic signals, behavioral analysis, and attribution tracking, it flags and blocks fraudulent tactics like click injection, click spamming, and organic hijacking.
This ensures your campaigns only pay for genuine clicks, improves conversion quality, and keeps your performance data accurate and trustworthy.
Conclusion
Click fraud in 2026 is harder to detect because fake activity is mixed with real user behavior, making campaigns look normal while budgets are quietly drained. That’s why protecting PPC ads and app campaigns require continuous monitoring, not just periodic checks.
Using click fraud detection software helps you spot suspicious click patterns in real time such as repeated clicks from the same devices, unusual traffic spikes, or low-quality sessions. These tools can automatically block fraudulent traffic and prevent wasted ad spend. Ad fraud solution like Valid8 by mFilterIt are designed to defend your campaigns and advertising networks from fraudsters, ensuring your budget reaches genuine users and your performance data stays accurate.
FAQs
How can I tell if my web PPC clicks are fake?
If your CTR is high but users leave immediately or spend only a few seconds on your site, it usually means clicks are not genuine.
How do click bots work?
Click bots automatically click ads and imitate real users by scrolling, staying on the page, and repeating actions to appear legitimate.
Can bots mimic real users in web campaigns?
Yes. AI-powered bots can use real browser environments to behave like humans, making it harder to detect fraud.
Are app campaigns more vulnerable to fraud?
Yes, because fraudsters can manipulate attribution systems and exploit last-click logic to steal credit for installs.
Why is click fraud harder to detect in walled gardens?
Platforms like Meta and Google offer limited visibility into traffic sources, so it’s harder to verify if clicks are genuine.
How can you identify click fraud?
Look for unusual patterns like high clicks with low conversions, budgets draining too fast, or users not engaging after clicking.
How does click fraud prevention work?
Prevention tools monitor traffic in real time, detect suspicious clicks, and block fraudulent activity before it wastes your budget.
How do fraud detection tools help protect your advertising budget?
They filter out fake traffic, provide source-level transparency, and ensure your ads reach real users—so your budget is spent on genuine engagement.
