{"id":31308,"date":"2021-01-11T15:50:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T15:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandignitybeta.com\/demo\/brandlatest\/2021\/01\/11\/click-fraud\/"},"modified":"2021-01-11T15:50:20","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T15:50:20","slug":"click-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brandignitybeta.com\/demo\/brandlatest\/click-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Click Fraud And How To Identify It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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business, internet earning and finance concept – close up of computer mouse on us dollar money<\/p><\/div>\n

Many companies rely on a pay-per-click campaign (PPC), which is a type of online paid advertisement for goods and services designed for search engines or website placements. An advertiser pays the search engine, for instance, Google, or a website where these ads are placed whenever a user clicks on them. However, fraudulent clicks have been a perennial problem since the onset of the digital age, and fraudsters show no signs of stopping, leaving widely-used platforms, such as Google and Facebook, vulnerable.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re interested in knowing what fraud clicks are and how to identify them, read on.<\/p>\n

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What Is Click Fraud?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Click fraud most often occurs in PPC ad campaigns, such that an automated script or computer program imitates the actions of actual web users clicking on web-based advertisements. In rare instances, actual humans are involved in this type of online advertisement scam.<\/p>\n

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As an ad is placed on a search engine or website, a bot, malware, or a real person clicks on this ad to produce an artificially high amount of monetized user interaction. Being a form of performance-based advertising, website owners or advertisers pay a specific amount of money, which is calculated based on the number of visitors who clicked on the ad. The sad part is that there\u2019s no genuine interest on the part of the \u2018attacker,\u2019 hence, becoming a wasted yet costly opportunity for the advertiser.<\/p>\n

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In 2015, it was reported that an estimated USD$6.13 billion<\/a> worth of revenues was taken away by predominantly bot-driven clicks from the advertising sector.<\/p>\n

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Typically, promoting click fraud is, in itself, not an act of malware generation. However, as this type of scam is performed mainly by a standalone \u2018bot,\u2019 the capacity to automatically generate clicks becomes incorporated as one of the capabilities of the malware, which is software that\u2019s created to deliberately damage a computer, server, or a computer network.<\/p>\n

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A click fraud then becomes one of the functions of malware that causes a bigger threat. Once a user innocently clicks on a malware-laden app or e-mail attachment, these risks could occur:<\/p>\n

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