Global Digital Ad Fraud Costs Forecast to Soar by 2028, Heightening Risk for PPC Budgets

Global digital ad fraud is projected to cost advertisers hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars by 2028, according to new Statista estimates. For PPC teams running Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads, this scale of invalid traffic means click fraud is no longer a marginal risk but a core budget line item that must be managed with the same discipline as bids and creative.

At ClickPatrol, we see this trend reflected in real accounts every day: as digital ad spend grows, fraudsters follow the money. Without strong click fraud protection, a growing portion of what looks like performance can be driven by bots, scripts and repeat abusers rather than real customers.

Key Statista figures on global digital ad fraud

The Statista outlook tracks how digital ad fraud costs are expected to climb over the next few years. While figures vary by source and methodology, the direction is clear: fast growth in losses and higher exposure for performance advertisers.

• The global cost of digital ad fraud is forecast to reach well over one hundred billion U.S. dollars annually by 2028.
• Compared with earlier years in the dataset, Statista projects a steep increase, reflecting both expansion in digital ad spend and rising sophistication of fraud schemes.
• Programmatic formats and automated auctions are highlighted as especially exposed, given the high volume of impressions and clicks processed with limited manual review.
• Mobile and in-app environments continue to account for a significant share of projected fraud losses.
• Brands and agencies focused on performance marketing are flagged as particularly at risk because they optimize on metrics that fraudsters can imitate, such as clicks and conversions.

For PPC practitioners, these headline numbers underscore a simple point: ignoring invalid traffic is equivalent to treating a large, growing cost as an unavoidable tax on advertising, rather than something you can actively reduce.

Why Statista’s 2028 ad fraud forecast matters for PPC teams

Forecasts of global fraud losses can feel abstract if you are focused on ROAS, CPAs and lead quality in a single account. But they translate directly into daily realities in Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads.

As more budget flows into auctions, criminal groups invest in better tools to generate fake clicks and visits that look legitimate on the surface. Typical patterns we encounter include:

• Click farms and device farms repeatedly clicking search and social ads to drain competitor budgets.
• Automated scripts rotating IPs, devices and user agents to circumvent basic blocking lists.
• Incentivized traffic from apps and sites that drive low quality or fake users just to trigger ad interactions.
• Placement on low quality sites that generate accidental or forced clicks rather than genuine interest.

When these clicks are not filtered, they pollute performance data. Campaigns and keywords can appear to work based on volume, while revenue per click quietly deteriorates. Optimizing on this distorted data often leads to higher bids on segments that are actually fraud heavy.

Impact on ad budgets, ROAS and analytics quality

For most PPC accounts we review, even a relatively modest fraud rate can have a material impact on performance. A few practical effects we regularly see:

• Budget drain: A portion of daily spend is consumed by bots or non genuine users, reducing the reach to real prospects.
• Inflated click-through and conversion figures: Low quality events can make ads and audiences look better than they are, masking underperformance.
• Biased smart bidding: Automated bidding strategies are trained on historical data. If that data is contaminated by fake clicks, the algorithm can be nudged toward worse traffic segments.
• Misleading channel and campaign comparisons: Channels or geos with higher fraud exposure may appear to have cheap clicks, skewing budget allocation decisions.

Statista’s projection of sharply rising fraud costs by 2028 means these issues are likely to intensify, not fade. Advertisers who treat invalid traffic purely as a platform problem, rather than a controllable variable, will see a growing share of their budgets consumed by non human activity.

Where fraud risk concentrates: formats, regions and tactics

While the Statista outlook is global and aggregated, industry data consistently highlights certain patterns that matter for PPC strategy:

• Programmatic display and video: High impression volumes create fertile ground for bots and spoofed domains.
• Search competitors and local abuse: In competitive niches, rival businesses or affiliates sometimes generate repeat clicks to exhaust budgets.
• Mobile and in-app inventory: Complex supply chains can hide fraudulent sources behind multiple intermediaries.
• Open geographies: Markets with weaker enforcement or lower media scrutiny can show higher fraud rates.

PPC managers should connect global forecasts with their own account realities. That means monitoring unusual spikes in clicks without matching growth in conversions, high click concentration from the same IP ranges or devices, and placements that deliver suspiciously high interaction rates with poor downstream performance.

How ClickPatrol approaches click fraud in a rising risk environment

Given the projected global cost of digital ad fraud by 2028, manual monitoring is no longer sufficient. At ClickPatrol, we focus on analyzing many behavioral and technical signals for every click, then acting on that insight in real time.

Typical patterns our systems watch for include:

• Abnormally high click frequencies from the same device, IP or network over a short time window.
• Inconsistent behavior between sessions, such as repeated ad clicks with zero engagement on site.
• Geographic or device signals that conflict with targeting settings or normal customer profiles.
• Blocked or masked environments that align with known fraud infrastructure.

When we detect suspicious activity, we automatically block future clicks from that source at the platform level in Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads. This helps advertisers protect active budgets and keep future data cleaner.

Turning global fraud forecasts into a practical PPC action plan

The Statista projection for 2028 should serve as a trigger for PPC teams to tighten their approach to traffic quality. Some practical steps we recommend to our clients:

• Treat invalid traffic as a measurable KPI: Track suspected fraud rates alongside CPA and ROAS, rather than treating them as background noise.
• Audit high spend segments: Regularly review top campaigns, geos and placements for signs of fake or low intent clicks.
• Strengthen exclusions: Use IP exclusions, placement exclusions and geo refinements informed by real fraud patterns, not just intuition.
• Align with finance and analytics: Ensure that finance teams understand how fraud impacts reported performance so ROI calculations factor in wasted spend.
• Deploy dedicated protection: Relying solely on platform level filters leaves gaps that specialized detection methods can close.

Advertisers that act early can turn a global risk into a competitive advantage. With cleaner data and protected budgets, you can optimize faster and scale campaigns with more confidence.

If you want to see how much of your current PPC spend is at risk, you can start a free trial of ClickPatrol or speak to our team to review your traffic quality and blocking strategy in detail.

Abisola

Meet Abisola! As the content manager at ClickPatrol, she’s the go-to expert on all things fake traffic. From bot clicks to ad fraud, Abisola knows how to spot, stop, and educate others about the sneaky tactics that inflate numbers but don’t bring real results.

View all posts by Abisola (Abisola)

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