Fraud in Marketing: How to Detect and Prevent It

What does fraud mean and how does it work

Instead of real customers, a company receives clicks, impressions, or leads generated by bots or people who perform actions for a fee. In this case, budgets are wasted and analytics data is distorted.

Advertising fraud has existed for as long as online advertising itself, and has changed along with it. Those who commit fraud may have different goals, but the essence is always the same: deception. Most often, fraudsters try to achieve the following:

• Artificially inflate marketing campaign metrics. Sometimes, unscrupulous agencies or freelancers resort to "fraud" to demonstrate the false effectiveness of their work to clients and justify the budget.
• “Drain” a competitor's budget. Direct competitors can also be scammers: they deploy bots that click on your ads en masse. As a result, you lose money by not attracting real customers and lower your ad rankings on advertising platforms.
• Earn illegal revenue from advertising. For example, they generate numerous fake clicks and impressions through botnets and receive payments from affiliate programs or media networks for traffic that does not actually benefit advertisers.

Types of fraud in marketing

• Click fraud. One of the most common types of fraud. It involves bots or hired people repeatedly clicking on ads. From the advertiser's perspective, this appears as a surge in traffic, but conversions do not increase, and the budget is rapidly spent on each click. As a result, the CTR increases, but there are no actual sales or leads.
• Forced impressions. Users are forced to view an ad: for example, a website visitor cannot proceed to the desired page until they view the banner, or they are suddenly redirected to an advertising resource. Such forced impressions inflate view counts even though the audience is not actually interested in the content.
• Fake (invisible) views. In this scheme, the ad is technically displayed but remains invisible. Fraudsters may shrink a banner to a tiny pixel or stack multiple ads on top of each other (this is called ad stacking) so that the user only sees the top banner. As a result, the advertiser pays for impressions that never actually happened.
• Domain spoofing. Fraudsters create a fake landing page disguised as the advertiser's legitimate website. The user clicks on the ad, expecting to be redirected, for example, to a well-known store's website, but instead is redirected to a scammer's page. This way, the scammers steal the brand's traffic and often the buyers' personal data as well.
• Inflated app downloads. In mobile advertising, artificially inflated install rates are often reported: bot programs simulate mass downloads, or people download an app not out of interest, but for a small payment or bonus.
• Fake leads (fictitious requests). In this case, fraudsters imitate responses from potential customers by submitting requests and completing forms with non-existent or false contact information. Such leads artificially inflate statistics but do not lead to actual sales. This type of fraud is especially common in affiliate marketing (CPA networks), where payment is made per lead generated.

How to protect yourself against fraud

It is impossible to completely eliminate the risk of fraud in marketing, but effective anti-fraud measures can help minimize it:

• Monitor traffic and user behavior. Regularly track key metrics on your website and in your advertising campaigns. It is important to know what the "norm" looks like for your marketing metrics and how organic users behave so you can immediately spot deviations. An abnormal spike in clicks or conversions is a valid reason to take a closer look.
• Use anti-fraud tools. There are services that take on the task of monitoring suspicious activity and automatically protect advertising campaigns. They analyze traffic characteristics, identify anomalies, filter out bots, and prevent repeated fraud attempts. Some advertising systems, such as Google Ads, already have basic protection mechanisms, but you can also integrate third-party solutions with advanced capabilities if necessary.
• Limit repeated clicks. Set limits on the number of clicks or other actions per user in a short period in your advertising campaigns. For example, enable automatic filtering of repeated clicks. This will make the task more difficult for bots and prevent them from uncontrollably wasting your budget.
• Protect forms and processes from bots. Implement CAPTCHA and other checks when submitting application forms, registering accounts, or leaving comments.
• Work only with reliable partners. If you attract traffic through contractors, ad networks, or affiliates, choose those with a good reputation and transparent reporting. Verify the platforms where your ads are placed and avoid partnering with questionable traffic sources.
• Check the quality of leads and sales. When working with a pay-per-lead or pay-per-sales model, implement mandatory application validation. For example, verify new clients’ contact information, track the lead's journey to the actual purchase (end-to-end analytics), and pay affiliate commissions only for confirmed results.
• Train your team to recognize fraud. Develop internal guidelines for marketers and traffic managers: what suspicious signs to look for, how to respond to suspected fraud, and whom to report identified cases to.
• Stay informed about new schemes. Monitor anti-fraud system updates, study identified fraud cases in your industry, and regularly review your security measures.

Are you being scammed? Signs of fraud

• High CTR with low conversion. If ad clicks are high, but targeted actions (calls, inquiries, sales) are virtually nonexistent, this leads to an abnormal click-to-conversion ratio. For example, an abnormally high CTR with poor sales usually indicates bot-driven traffic.
• Massive, rapid user bounces. Visitors land on a page and then immediately leave. Random, individual bounces are normal, but if their share increases sharply, this may indicate behavioral manipulation or untargeted bot traffic.
• Suspicious activity from a single IP address or geolocation. When a huge share of traffic suddenly comes from a single IP address, a single small network, or a region uncharacteristic of your business, there is a high probability that this is done by a botnet or an organized group of clickers.
• Unusual behavior across multiple accounts. If multiple accounts (on social media, forums, or apps) start behaving in a similar manner, for example, simultaneously showing interest in the same page or ad, this is a warning sign. Coordinated actions by multiple users often indicate fraud, orchestrated by bots or groups of actors.
• Traffic spikes at unusual times. Be wary if peak user activity occurs at unusual times that do not correspond to your target audience's behavior. For example, a sudden influx of visitors late at night or on holidays, when traffic is typically low, could indicate automated scripts.
• Excessively fast clicks and actions. Bots often reveal themselves through their unnatural speed: for example, a series of clicks or views occurring in a split second, which is physically impossible for a human. Any other abnormally fast behavior (instant clicks, super-fast form completion) is a sign that an automated script is operating on the site.
• Excessively rapid increases in metrics. If traffic or ad conversions suddenly increase exponentially in just a couple of days for no apparent reason, it is worth checking to see if such "success" is actually real. Often, it is not a matter of brilliant campaign setup, but rather fraud: the use of bots to artificially inflate the numbers. The same applies to a sudden influx of similar leads or an unexpected increase in social media followers.

In short: what is fraud and how to protect yourself from it

Fraud is a serious problem for businesses. It not only wastes budgets and reduces advertising returns, but also undermines the very foundation of marketing: data reliability and trust in campaigns. Fake traffic and fictitious leads distort the picture so much that decisions may be based on false metrics.

Completely eliminating fraud is impossible, as scammers constantly invent new schemes. But a combination of technology and vigilance can significantly reduce the risks. It is a never-ending race: while scammers are looking for loopholes, marketers must implement new protection tools and monitor anti-fraud trends.

Combating fraud is not a one-time measure, but a daily routine. Enable anti-fraud tools and analyze suspicious traffic on a continuous basis.