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Polygraph: Criminals Are Defrauding Advertisers Using Bots
November 2022 by Polygraph
Click fraud detection service Polygraph is warning advertisers about an internet scam which is stealing tens of billions of dollars every year.
Criminals create websites and monetize the content using advertisements. Every time the advertisements are clicked, the scammers earn small fees from the advertising networks. Each website generates thousands of fake clicks every day, with tens of thousands of scam websites currently in operation.
"Click fraud is the billion dollar crime most advertisers have never heard of," said Trey Vanes, head of marketing at Polygraph. "Advertisers are paying advertising networks to display their ads across the internet. Little do they realize a large number of the ’people’ clicking on the ads are bots."
According to Vanes, criminals are using bots as they can accurately simulate a real person clicking on an advertisement.
"Modern bots are virtually indistinguishable from people," said Vanes. "The scammers are creating bots which visit their websites, click on the ads, and then navigate around the advertisers’ websites, often generating fake conversions such as filling out a leads form or adding items to a shopping cart.
"Unless advertisers are trying to detect click fraud, they won’t know, and can’t prove, they’re being defrauded by criminals. To make matters worse, many advertising networks make little to no effort to detect click fraud, meaning the scammers are able to get away with their crime without risk of being caught," added Vanes.
Polygraph helps advertisers detect click fraud, prevent click fraud, and get refunds from the advertising networks.
"Polygraph is helping hundreds of advertisers protect their ads from click fraud," said Vanes. "We show our customers which scam websites are generating fake clicks on their ads, so they can block those websites from being able to display or click on their ads in the future. We tell them which of their ad keywords are being targeted by scammers, so they can remove those ad keywords from their campaigns to stay under the radar of click fraud bots. We use advanced click fraud detection to catch even the most sophisticated click fraud bots. Finally, we provide our customers with the details of every fake click, so they can quantify their loss and apply for refunds from the ad networks.
"Polygraph makes it easy to prevent click fraud and save your ad budget," added Vanes.
