Click Fraud

Generating fake clicks on ads, via bots, click farms, or scripts, to drain advertiser budgets or inflate publisher earnings.

By Brandon MinaCEO, BrandPilot AIUpdated November 2026

Short answer

Click fraud is the generation of fake clicks on ads through bots, click farms, or scripts. It is used to drain competitors' advertising budgets or inflate a publisher's earnings on pay-per-click campaigns. Because it distorts performance data as well as wasting spend, advertisers rely on detection and filtering tools to identify invalid clicks.