Ad Fraud

Definition:
Ad fraud refers to any deliberate attempt to manipulate or exploit digital advertising for financial gain through non-human or invalid interactions.

Why it matters:
Advertisers lose billions annually to fraud schemes that produce fake clicks, impressions, or conversions, often without delivering real human attention.

Types of ad fraud:

• Click fraud (bots or click farms)

• Impression fraud (stacked ads, pixel stuffing)

• Domain spoofing (fake sites pretending to be premium inventory)

• Install fraud (fake app installs)

Best practices:

• Monitor IP, geo, and time-based traffic anomalies

• Block known fraudulent domains and IPs

• Use traffic verification and audit solutions

• Cross-reference billing vs. engagement data