How 2025 Exposed the Real Scale of Ad Fraud and What PPC Brands Must Fix in 2026

In 2025, ad fraud stopped being a background concern and turned into a headline risk for every serious advertiser. Across the accounts we monitor at ClickPatrol and in multiple industry studies, one pattern was clear: a meaningful share of paid media budgets is still being lost to fake impressions, bots and repeated clicks that never had a chance to convert.

For PPC teams going into 2026, this is not just a brand safety story. It is a performance and analytics problem that distorts cost per acquisition, hides winning campaigns and makes it harder to justify budgets internally.

2025: The Year Ad Fraud Numbers Got Hard to Ignore

The original promise of programmatic and performance marketing was precise targeting and measurable results. In 2025, the reality was more complicated. As more spend moved into automated bidding, broad match and audience expansion, we saw more room for low quality and invalid traffic to slip into Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns.

Industry reporting through 2025 highlighted several recurring points: ad fraud is not confined to obscure sites, and the problem is growing faster on mobile and video inventory where measurement is weaker. For performance marketers, that translates into higher acquisition costs and less reliable attribution across channels.

Key ad fraud findings that shaped 2025

Across the research referenced in 2025, a few themes stood out that every PPC team should have on their radar in 2026.

• Ad fraud was repeatedly estimated in double digit percentages of digital ad spend in several global studies, with certain programmatic environments showing significantly higher risk than walled gardens.
• Mobile and in-app inventory were flagged as particularly exposed to sophisticated fake traffic and spoofed devices.
• Video and CTV formats attracted higher CPMs and, in turn, higher fraud attempts compared with standard display.
• Brands that put in place always-on fraud monitoring and independent verification reported noticeably lower invalid traffic rates than those relying only on native platform filters.
• Marketers who audited their data quality found that a non-trivial portion of “high performing” placements were actually being propped up by fake or low intent clicks.

While methodologies differ across reports, the direction is consistent: without active protection, a meaningful slice of paid clicks and impressions never come from real users.

Why ad fraud in 2025 hit PPC performance so hard

Ad fraud is not just a waste line in a budget. It actively pushes your Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads strategies in the wrong direction. When bots or click farms engage with your ads, every downstream metric gets skewed.

For example, we regularly see accounts where remarketing audiences are filled with non-human traffic, leading to inflated audience sizes, higher frequency and more spend on users who never had purchase intent. Automated bidding systems then start to optimize toward these patterns, raising bids where fake engagement looks strong and pulling back where real users behave more cautiously.

Over time, this can make entire campaigns appear unprofitable or unreliable, even when the underlying creative and targeting are sound. The cost is not just wasted clicks. It is missed revenue and lost learning.

What brands must fix in 2026 to control ad fraud

As we move into 2026, the brands that will win are those that treat traffic quality as a core performance lever, not an afterthought. The focus needs to shift from one-off audits to continuous monitoring and prevention.

1. Make invalid traffic a core KPI

Traditionally, PPC teams have been measured on conversions, CPA, ROAS and sometimes impression share. Very few dashboards include an explicit metric for invalid or suspicious clicks. That is changing.

We recommend that advertisers track a clear share of suspicious or blocked clicks by campaign and by placement. When this metric trends up, it is often the earliest signal that a channel, partner or creative format is attracting the wrong kind of attention.

2. Go beyond native platform filters

Every major ad platform offers some level of automated filtering for invalid traffic. In 2025, it became obvious that this baseline screening is not enough for brands with significant budgets.

At ClickPatrol, we analyze multiple behavioral signals per click, such as unusual session patterns, repeated ad interactions from a single device and mismatches between click volume and onsite engagement. We then act in real time to block repeat offenders at the IP, device or placement level. This kind of independent layer is essential if you want to protect budgets without waiting for post-fact credit adjustments.

3. Clean up remarketing and lookalike audiences

One of the most damaging effects of 2025 ad fraud was the contamination of audience lists. When bots or fake users enter your site via paid clicks, they are often added to remarketing pools and used as seed lists for similar audiences.

The result is an ongoing cycle where your targeting is progressively tilted toward patterns of invalid traffic. Brands going into 2026 should take time to rebuild critical audiences from cleaner data: for instance, excluding known fraudulent IPs and devices, or only seeding lists with users who reached deeper, high-intent actions on site.

Budget and performance risks for 2026

For many advertisers, the headline risk is simple: double digit percentages of spend going to fake or low intent traffic. But the deeper issue is what this does to decision making.

When media plans are built on distorted data, budget moves that seem logical can be harmful. For example, shifting more spend into a placement that appears to drive cheap clicks and strong engagement, while in reality those numbers are inflated by automated traffic. Or pausing a campaign because post-click behavior looks weak, when in fact the campaign is attracting real users but is being measured alongside a pool of invalid sessions.

Without a clear view on traffic quality, you risk underfunding the channels that truly work and overfunding those that simply attract more bots. That is why a number of brands highlighted in 2025 case studies have started to treat independent invalid traffic reporting as a required input to quarterly budget reviews.

How ClickPatrol helps brands respond to 2025 ad fraud lessons

From our vantage point at ClickPatrol, the biggest shift in 2025 was not just the volume of fraud but the awareness among senior marketers. Traffic quality conversations moved from technical teams into CMO and CFO discussions. The next step is execution: putting systems in place that can detect and block bad traffic before it drains spend.

ClickPatrol connects to your Google Ads, Meta and Microsoft Ads accounts and evaluates every click using behavioral and contextual signals. When our systems detect fake, automated or repeated clicks, we act to stop further spend from going to those sources. The outcome is a higher share of budget reaching real potential customers, more reliable conversion data and more confidence when you scale campaigns.

For advertisers planning 2026 budgets, this kind of protection is now a practical necessity. With cleaner traffic and more trustworthy analytics, you can allocate spend with much less guesswork and more focus on creative, offers and customer experience.

Brands that want to put the 2025 ad fraud lessons into practice can start a free trial of ClickPatrol or speak to our team to review current invalid traffic exposure and prevention options.

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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