Click Fraud Glossary
Key terms and definitions related to click fraud, ad fraud, and PPC protection.
Bot Traffic
Bot traffic refers to any non-human traffic to a website or app. While some bots are legitimate (search engine crawlers), malicious bots can click ads, scrape content, and skew analytics.
CPC
Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on their ad. High CPC industries are especially vulnerable to click fraud.
Click Farm
A click farm is a business that employs large numbers of people or devices to click on paid advertising links, boosting the appearance of engagement while providing zero value to the advertiser.
Click Fraud
Click fraud is the practice of repeatedly clicking on a pay-per-click (PPC) ad with the intent to drain the advertiser's budget or inflate publisher revenue without genuine interest in the product or service.
Device Fingerprinting
Device fingerprinting is a technique used to identify a device by collecting information about its hardware, software, and configuration. It helps detect fraudulent clicks even when IP addresses change.
IP Exclusion
IP exclusion is a feature in ad platforms that allows advertisers to block specific IP addresses from seeing their ads, commonly used to prevent click fraud from known bad actors.
Invalid Clicks
Invalid clicks are clicks on ads that Google and other platforms consider illegitimate, including accidental clicks, automated clicking tools, and other deceptive software.
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. Click fraud directly reduces ROAS by wasting spend on non-converting traffic.