As prevent fraudulent clicks we’re often faced with the challenge of preventing and eliminating click fraud. Whether it’s bot traffic or competitors clicking on your ads to bloat their own performance figures or to unfairly discredit their competition, it’s a real problem that can wreak havoc with the success of your campaigns.

There are many types of click fraud and each one is different from the next. For example, some fraudsters hire real people to click on their ads in order to bloat performance numbers and receive a higher revenue cut. Others use malware viruses to infect devices with a fake click bot application that runs on their computer or mobile device and imitates user behaviour (clicking on specific ads).

Click with Confidence: How to Prevent and Combat Fraudulent Clicks in Your Online Advertising

Some examples of click fraud include toolbar injection, where users install a malicious piece of software that hijacks the attribution of app installations and drives away traffic. Another type is install hijacking, where fraudsters sneak a fraudulent application onto users’ devices that overtakes existing apps and thereby causes the install to be counted as a conversion.

Luckily, there are some really great tools to help you detect click fraud in your PPC accounts. One of the best is to use a service that checks each click’s device against millions of red flags such as spoofing and switching between devices to identify networks of fraudulent users. Additionally, using tools that look at the click timestamp and action timestamp of each click can help you identify suspicious patterns such as a user clicking on a lot of your ads in a very short period of time.