There are orgs that specialize in detecting click fraud as a service.
They will offer research on what sites are the worst offenders in terms of click fraud. Reddit typically ranks at the top. Tik Tok is also very high.
Click fraud just means that someone deliberately clicked on an ad with no intention of engagement. This could be a bot network trying to fake engagement, a competitor trying to cost you money, or the advertising network might just be making up numbers altogether.
For instance, imagine you post an ad on google search. You enter keywords or phrases you want your ad to show up for. Every time someone searches your keywords, there is a chance your ad will be displayed to them. Among other things, Google will report to you how many users viewed your ad and how many clicked on it. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you'll be charged by google according to whatever you bid on the keyword. This cost-per-click (CPC) can be as high as $50 for a keyword like "insurance" or as low as $0.01 for a word that no one else is advertising against.
You can see how a bad actor could abuse this by spam clicking on ads.
> If we fail to detect attempts to manipulate our platform, including fraudulent activity within our advertising systems, Redditors and our advertisers could lose confidence in us, thereby damaging our reputation and deterring usage of our products and services.
To my reading, the rest of it describes it as a problem they need to keep solving, not one that's as broken as I understand it to be, as an outsider.
They will offer research on what sites are the worst offenders in terms of click fraud. Reddit typically ranks at the top. Tik Tok is also very high.
Click fraud just means that someone deliberately clicked on an ad with no intention of engagement. This could be a bot network trying to fake engagement, a competitor trying to cost you money, or the advertising network might just be making up numbers altogether.
For instance, imagine you post an ad on google search. You enter keywords or phrases you want your ad to show up for. Every time someone searches your keywords, there is a chance your ad will be displayed to them. Among other things, Google will report to you how many users viewed your ad and how many clicked on it. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you'll be charged by google according to whatever you bid on the keyword. This cost-per-click (CPC) can be as high as $50 for a keyword like "insurance" or as low as $0.01 for a word that no one else is advertising against.
You can see how a bad actor could abuse this by spam clicking on ads.