Online Ad Fraud: Why It Is Growing And How Advertisers Can Fight Back

Online ad fraud is no longer a marginal issue. Industry estimates cited in recent expert commentary suggest that fraudulent activity could siphon off tens of billions of dollars from digital ad budgets this year, with projections running into hundreds of billions globally over the next few years. For PPC teams running Google Ads, Meta Ads or Microsoft Ads, this means a growing share of clicks and impressions are generated by bots, scripts or fake users instead of real prospects.

From ClickPatrol’s perspective, the core problem is simple: ad fraud distorts your traffic quality, pollutes your analytics and drains spend from campaigns that look healthy in-platform but fail to convert in reality. As fraud tactics get more sophisticated, relying only on platform filters and manual IP exclusions leaves a serious gap in protection.

Why online ad fraud is such a persistent problem

The experts interviewed in recent coverage highlight that online ad fraud is attractive because it combines high revenue potential for criminals with relatively low risk of enforcement. Fraudsters can spin up low-quality websites, spoof apps or buy compromised devices, then route large volumes of automated or incentivized traffic through programmatic ad pipes.

We regularly see these scenarios across PPC accounts:

• Bot farms inflating clicks on search and display campaigns, often from the same subnets or device fingerprints, consuming budget but generating no meaningful on-site behavior.
• Click farms performing low-quality human clicks to mimic engagement while still failing to convert or interact with key site elements.
• Fake app inventory within display and video networks where ads technically “serve” but are never seen by real users in a normal context.
• Competitor and malicious clicks where the goal is to drive up your CPC and force your ads out of auctions.

Because much of this invalid traffic looks legitimate at first glance, it passes through basic filters. Fraudsters rotate IPs, user agents and devices and increasingly mimic human-like behavior such as variable scroll depth or random dwell times.

Key ad fraud insights highlighted by recent reports

Recent market commentary and referenced studies point to several worrying trends around online ad fraud and invalid traffic.

• Industry estimates suggest ad fraud losses already reach tens of billions of dollars annually worldwide, with some forecasts projecting a figure in the hundreds of billions within a few years if unchecked.
• Programmatic environments and open exchanges are consistently identified as high-risk areas, as they allow huge scale with limited direct oversight of every placement.
• Fraud is not limited to display and CTV; search and social campaigns also see systematic invalid clicks, especially on competitive keywords.
• Mobile and in-app inventory are frequently cited as hot spots because fake apps and spoofed bundles can be inserted into the supply chain.
• Experts stress that many advertisers underestimate the proportion of their spend going to invalid traffic because platform-reported metrics often look strong until deeper analytics or third-party verification are applied.

For PPC specialists, the implication is clear: top-line performance metrics such as CTR or impressions are no longer enough. You need to be able to separate real users from fake engagement and tie spend back to genuine business outcomes.

How online ad fraud harms PPC campaigns

Online ad fraud affects far more than immediate wasted spend. It actively misleads your optimization decisions.

We typically see three main areas of damage:

• Budget leakage: A portion of your daily budget is burned on bots, scripts and repeat clickers. This means fewer impressions and clicks from real users and missed opportunities on profitable keywords or audiences.
• Distorted optimization signals: Fraudulent clicks and sessions can inflate conversion-like events such as micro-engagements, skewing automated bidding, audience expansion and placement choices in Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads.
• Unreliable analytics: When a non-trivial share of traffic is fake, your CPA, ROAS and funnel metrics become unreliable, making it difficult to judge which campaigns, ad groups or creatives genuinely work.

Over time, these effects compound. Automated bidding strategies trained on polluted data can gradually shift budget toward segments with high fake engagement. From the outside, performance may look stable, even as sales lag behind spend.

Why basic platform protections are not enough

Google, Meta and Microsoft all provide built-in invalid click filters and credits when clear abuse is detected. These systems do remove a portion of the worst traffic, but they have limits.

In our work with advertisers and agencies, we often find:

• Significant residual fraud that passes platform thresholds because it is subtle and distributed across many IPs and devices.
• Delayed detection, where credits are applied only after the fact, rather than blocking fraudulent engagement in real time.
• Limited transparency into the specific patterns, IP ranges or placements responsible for suspicious activity.

For performance marketers accountable for every dollar, this gap between platform-level protection and the reality of sophisticated fraud is where dedicated click protection becomes essential.

How ClickPatrol tackles online ad fraud in PPC

ClickPatrol focuses on identifying suspicious behavior at the click level and blocking bad actors before they can keep draining your budget. Our systems evaluate many behavioral and technical signals per click, including patterns such as abnormal click frequency from a device, repeated short sessions, suspect referrers and inconsistent geo data.

As a result, advertisers can:

• Block fake and repeated clicks in real time across Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads using automated rules and integrations.
• Protect budgets by preventing the same device, IP range or fingerprint from repeatedly triggering paid clicks once it is flagged as suspicious.
• Improve traffic quality so that your campaigns are optimized around real users who actually browse, engage and convert.
• Get cleaner analytics by reducing the share of invalid traffic inside your reporting and attribution views.

This approach helps agencies and in-house teams scale what works with greater confidence, because optimization decisions are based on reliable engagement and conversion data instead of inflated volumes from bots and fraud schemes.

Practical steps advertisers can take against ad fraud

Based on what we see in active accounts, there are several practical measures every PPC team should implement.

1. Monitor patterns beyond standard metrics

Track metrics that highlight suspicious behavior, such as unusually high click volumes from specific locations, spikes in bounce rates on certain placements or very low session duration for traffic from particular campaigns. Combine platform data with analytics and server-side logs where possible.

2. Tighten your targeting and placements

For display, video and app campaigns, regularly review placement reports and exclude low-quality sites or apps with high spend but poor on-site behavior. For search, watch for keywords and audiences that generate heavy spend with weak downstream performance and scrutinize their traffic quality closely.

3. Use automated rules and lists

Set rules that react to anomalies, such as pausing campaigns when CTR or click volume jumps without corresponding conversions. Maintain and update exclusion lists for IP ranges, placements and app IDs that repeatedly show suspicious patterns.

4. Add independent click fraud protection

Given the scale and sophistication of current online ad fraud, relying on manual checks alone is not realistic for most PPC teams. A dedicated protection platform like ClickPatrol can automatically analyze each click, flag risky behavior and push blocks back to ad platforms in real time.

Advertisers looking to quantify the problem in their own accounts can start a free trial with ClickPatrol or speak with our team to review recent traffic logs and uncover hidden invalid activity that might be distorting performance.

What this trend means for agencies and performance teams

As budgets continue to move into programmatic, social and mobile channels, online ad fraud will remain a central operational risk for media buyers. Clients increasingly expect agencies to demonstrate not just performance, but also strong safeguards around traffic quality and budget protection.

Teams that can show transparent reporting on invalid traffic rates, clear mitigation steps and cleaner post-click behavior data will be better positioned to win and retain accounts. We see more RFPs including explicit questions about click fraud prevention, verification tools and how agencies handle suspicious traffic.

For PPC leaders, the priority now is to treat online ad fraud as a permanent strategic challenge rather than an occasional anomaly. Combining platform tools, rigorous analysis and dedicated click protection such as ClickPatrol is becoming a baseline requirement for credible performance marketing.

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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