The term “click fraud” refers to ways cybercriminals today might trick online advertising. It’s a way for shady companies to harm their rivals without paying attention. Before starting a website to make money off of it, you should familiarize yourself with these five facts regarding click fraud.

Artificial Intelligence Is Taking Over:

Numerous experts in the field of cybersecurity have seen the ever-increasing use of bots in the commission of cybercrime. These automated programs were formerly simple to spot.  Intelligent cybercriminals are now utilizing both AI and ML in their operations. Combining these two advantages, thieves have created bots nearly indistinguishable from human users.

Ad verifiers attempting to prevent click fraud face new difficulties as bot usage grows, and it becomes harder to track down their origins as more people start using them. Bots, rather than humans, may now generate twenty percent or more of all clicks on websites and advertisements. 

Many experts in the field of cybersecurity believe this to be an underestimate of the true scope of the issue. With the rise in VPN usage over the past decade, ad verifiers have found it increasingly difficult to track down the origin of bot traffic.

You can’t put a price on a friend’s death:

Ad verifiers have developed various strategies for determining the authenticity of a user’s engagement with an online ad. This is easier said than done, though. As discussed earlier, advances in AI and ML have allowed the development of robots that exhibit remarkably human-like behavior. Bot developers have made it much harder to spot their code in action by simulating the flaws and peculiarities that set humans apart from machines.

Criminals are making infamous Profits:

The annual ad fraud business is worth billions of dollars, which is a shock to many. Estimates of the overall amount of money lost by advertisers due to click fraud have increased dramatically over the past few years. This figure, however, skyrocketed to $16.7 billion by year’s end in 2017, and it topped $27 billion in 2018.

With so much money at stake, businesses are motivated to prevent click fraud, as are criminals. Many people are trying to stop internet advertising fraud, yet the money lost keeps rising exponentially. Many were surprised by how pervasive the problem is when it was first quantified in recent years, thanks to improved analytical tools.

The Ad Verifiers Strike Back:

Click fraud and other advertising frauds are being countered by adding verifiers in various methods. For instance, the case where website traffic suddenly and unexpectedly spikes; is often a sign of malicious activity. 

In the same way that distributed denial of service (DDOS) assaults were used to take down websites and other internet services, bad actors now use bots to generate thousands of clicks on the material. This can, at best, skew a website’s statistics and, at worst, cause them significant financial harm.

Analysis and tracking IP addresses is another standard method, though it is becoming less efficient due to the rise of virtual private networks and proxies. Attempting to prevent click fraud with IP bans is futile in this day and age when hiding one’s IP address and location is so simple.

To a large extent, competitors are the ones behind click fraud:

Although cybercriminals have been known to engage in click fraud as part of a larger scheme to defraud advertisers, they are not the prime suspects in this crime. In reality, most fraudulent clicks come from business rivals. A competitor’s business can get an advantage by exploiting your pay-per-click advertising by repeatedly clicking on it and running up a hefty charge in your name.

Conclusion:

Indeed, click fraud is a significant issue that shows no signs of going away soon. Any company engaging in pay-per-click advertising must be alert to the problem of click fraud and take steps to prevent it.