click fraud

noun

Definition of click fraud

: fraud committed by clicking through an advertisement on a website multiple times to spuriously increase the cost to the advertiser Click fraud is where organisations or individuals take advantage of search engines' pay-per-click models—in which a company pays a fee if a consumer clicks through from the search engine to its website after entering search criteria—by continually clicking on an organisation's link. — Travel Weekly

Examples of click fraud in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Drenik: How do brands increase ROI when ad blockers and click fraud are prevalent? — Gary Drenik, Forbes, 19 Oct. 2021 The clicks are used for click fraud — e.g. to earn CPC ad revenue under false pretenses. — Dr. Augustine Fou, Forbes, 20 Apr. 2021 Researchers have discovered two Google Play apps with more than 1.5 million downloads engaging in a new form of click fraud that drained batteries, slowed performance, and increased mobile data usage on infected phones. — Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 29 Aug. 2019 The extensions found by ICEBRG were used in a click fraud scheme, but company researchers said the add-ons just as easily could have been used to do more nefarious things. — Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 19 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'click fraud.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.