Click fraud scammers are using bots to steal USD $100B from advertisers every year.

Cybersecurity firm Polygraph has released the click fraud rates for the third and fourth quarters of 2023, showing at least 21% of ad clicks were from click fraud bots.

“Display networks are the worst offenders,” said Trey Vanes, Polygraph’s head of marketing. “There are millions of websites on display networks using bots to generate fake clicks on ads. Many of these websites have no real visitors, and are obvious scams.”

According to Vanes, the ad networks are not doing enough to prevent click fraud.

“Polygraph is a relatively small cybersecurity firm, yet we’re magnitudes better at detecting click fraud compared to the ad networks,” said Vanes. “Some of the ad networks appear to be doing almost nothing, and none of them are doing a good job.”

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Vanes says stealth bots are the most common type of click fraud bot.

“Our data shows puppeteer-extra and its stealth plugin was the most common click fraud bot in the second half of 2023. It’s an advanced bot, using esoteric features of the JavaScript programming language to pretend it’s a person.

“Around 96% of click fraud bots are stealth bots,” added Vanes.

Vanes advises advertisers to turn off the display network when promoting their websites.

“If you turn off the display network, your ads won’t be shown on scam display websites, which means fewer bot clicks. Alternatively, you can use a whitelist, which puts you in control of where your ads will appear,” said Vanes.

Polygraph helps advertisers detect click fraud, prevent bot clicks, and get refunds from the ad networks.

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