Examples of Click Fraud in Display Advertising (And How to Spot Them)

Think your display ads are performing just fine? What if half those clicks were never real to begin with?

Display advertising plays a vital role in most digital strategies, but it also attracts its fair share of fraud. From bot farms to invisible ads, click fraud in display campaigns is quietly inflating your metrics, burning through budgets, and misleading your optimisation decisions.

In this blog, we break down what click fraud in display advertising looks like, the most common techniques fraudsters use, and how to spot and prevent it. Whether you're running programmatic banners or native placements, knowing what to look for is your first step in protecting your media spend.

What Is Click Fraud in Display Advertising?

Click fraud in display advertising refers to any deliberate action that generates fake or non-genuine clicks on banner, native, or video ads. These clicks don’t come from real customers and have no chance of converting. Instead, they’re driven by bots, click farms, or fraudulent publishers trying to inflate their earnings from CPM or CPC models.

Unlike search advertising, where fraud is often keyword-targeted, display fraud thrives on the scale and complexity of programmatic ecosystems. It can come from obscure publisher domains, mobile apps, or even premium inventory that’s been spoofed.

The end result? Your impressions look high, your CTRs seem decent, but your conversions stall, and your costs climb.

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The Most Common Types of Click Fraud in Display Ads

Understanding the tactics fraudsters use is key to building a strong click fraud prevention strategy. Below are the most common click fraud techniques affecting display ads:

Bot-Generated Clicks

Bots mimic human users by clicking on display ads repeatedly across multiple sessions and devices. These bots are often programmed to behave like real users by scrolling, pausing, and clicking to evade basic fraud detection.

How to spot it: High click-through rates with zero conversions, frequent clicks from new devices, and a spike in sessions from datacentre IPs.

Click Farms

Click farms use real people to click on ads for payment. While slower than bots, they’re harder to detect because the traffic originates from legitimate devices and geolocations.

How to spot it: Identical device models, sudden surges in traffic from unusual regions, and low engagement after the click.

Ad Stacking

Ad stacking involves layering multiple ads in a single ad placement, with only the top ad visible. Every stacked ad registers an impression or click even if it was never seen or interacted with.

How to spot it: Unusually high impression volumes with no corresponding lift in engagement or conversions.

Pixel Stuffing

Pixel stuffing hides ads in a 1x1 pixel iframe, rendering them invisible to users. Fraudsters then simulate clicks on these hidden ads to inflate traffic numbers.

How to spot it: Poor viewability rates, zero on-site engagement, and impressions from unknown inventory sources.

Domain Spoofing

Domain spoofing is when fraudsters misrepresent low-quality or non-human traffic as coming from reputable publisher domains. This tricks advertisers into bidding high for what they believe is premium inventory.

How to spot it: Traffic from top-tier domains with behaviour that doesn’t match your expected audience, and inconsistencies between the referrer and actual placement.

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How Click Fraud Impacts Your Display Ad Performance

Click fraud doesn’t just waste budget. It skews the very metrics that marketers rely on to optimise campaigns.

• False positives in performance data: Inflated CTRs and impressions make underperforming creatives look successful.
  
  
• Wasted spend on non-human traffic: Budgets are depleted before real users ever see your ads.
  
  
• Misguided optimisation decisions: Fraudulent data leads to poor bidding strategies and targeting logic.
  
  
• Lower ROAS: With a significant portion of clicks never converting, your cost-per-acquisition skyrockets.
  
  

Invalid traffic silently erodes your competitive edge. Without proper protection in place, you're making decisions on broken data.

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How to Detect and Prevent Display Click Fraud

Spotting click fraud is only half the battle. The real win comes from stopping it in its tracks. Here's how to stay ahead:

1. Monitor Unusual Traffic Patterns

Establish baselines for your campaigns and monitor for anomalies. Watch for:

• Spikes in traffic from unknown sources
• High bounce rates and short time-on-site
• Irregular click frequency per user

Pattern recognition is one of your first lines of defence especially when combined with a fraud detection tool. Not sure what to do when now that the campaigns looks off? Check out our guide on building a click fraud response plan to triage threats, assess campaign exposure, and implement long-term protection.

2. Use Real-Time Fraud Protection Tools

Prevention is better than reaction. Using click fraud prevention software like TrafficGuard allows you to detect and block fraudulent clicks before they impact your campaign performance. Our platform identifies invalid traffic in real time, integrates seamlessly with your ad accounts, and ensures your budget is directed at genuine users.

Want to see where your spend is going? Build your click fraud response plan today.

3. Set Strict Frequency Caps and Use Whitelists

Implementing frequency caps ensures that no single user (or bot) can click your ads repeatedly in a short span. Maintain a whitelist of trusted domains and inventory sources to avoid buying into spoofed or low-quality placements. Many fraud schemes rely on volume but don’t give them the opening.

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Conclusion

Display advertising remains one of the most versatile channels in digital marketing, but only when your traffic is clean. Click fraud continues to evolve, with sophisticated bots and underhanded tactics quietly draining your spend.

By learning to recognise the signs, adopting real-time prevention tools, and setting strategic controls, you can take back control of your campaigns and maximise your ROI.

Don’t wait until fraud shows up in your CPA. Act early, audit often, and protect your performance.

Inline call out:
Not sure how much you’re losing? Use our Invalid Traffic Calculator to see exactly how much of your media budget could be going to waste. You might be surprised by the results.

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FAQs & Key Takeaways

1. What are the most common types of click fraud in display ads?
   Bot-generated clicks, click farms, ad stacking, pixel stuffing, and domain spoofing are the most prevalent types. . For a broader look at the full spectrum of threats, explore our guide to the different types of click fraud.
   
   
2. How can I prevent click fraud in my display campaigns?
   Monitor traffic anomalies, set strict frequency caps, and use fraud prevention software like TrafficGuard for real-time protection.
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3. Why is click fraud so damaging to display ads?
   It distorts performance data, wastes your ad budget, and leads to misguided optimisation decisions that hurt your budget.