Click spam is often referred to as organics poaching. To make the term more understandable, click spam is defined as a certain kind of advertising fraud, which takes place when the fraudsters perform clicks in place of the users who have no idea about such ads. Click spams allow the fraudsters to claim credit for such clicks unless there are some preventive measures in place.

The circle of click spam starts when a user lands on an app or a mobile web page that is operated by a fraudster. Once the user lands on such platforms, numerous kinds of fraud can see the light of the day, which are listed as follows:

• The mobile web page may show invisible ads, which can execute clicks in the background without the user knowing.
• While the user gets busy rummaging around the app, the fraudster can play its tricks and begin clicking, showing as though the user has come across an advertisement and interacted with it.
• If there is an app running in the background 24/7, the fraudulent app can generate innumerable clicks. Such background running apps include battery savers, launchers, memory cleaners, and the like.
• To make a view seem like an engagement, the fraudulent app owner can send impressions-as-clicks to make it all more genuine.
• The fraudster can even take it up a notch and send clicks through fraudulent device IDs to tracking users. The users remain unaware that they have been associated with an ad because they don’t even know if such an ad exists. Suffice it to say that such a spam scheme runs in the background and the users remain oblivious to it.

What is the importance of click spamming?

The accuracy of the marketer’s data can be ruined by the three major threats to marketing spending, which are click spam, SDK spoofing, and click injection. Click spamming works on capturing organic traffic and claims credit for the users’ interaction with the ads where the users have no idea of what is going on. The biggest fraudulent technique in the entire mobile industry is click spamming, and as of now, it is being done on a massive scale.

The certainty of acquisition decisions is also put at risk due to click spam. For instance, if there is an advertising network and it has successfully claimed organic users who perform well, the advertisers get an incentive to invest more in a similar channel to acquire a handful of such users. This results in creating a negative loop for the advertisers who can acquire organic users on their own, but instead, pay someone else. The advertisers keep on doing this till it’s too late for them to go over their strategic decisions again.

If you want to learn more about click injection and click spam, head over to our guide. In addition to this, you will also understand the ways you can prevent fraudsters from compromising your personal data and stealing your ad spend.