Ad fraud
Advertising (ad) fraud, also called click fraud or click spam, is a practice by bad actors, specifically dubious advertising networks, wherein they deliberately use automated programs—from simple to sophisticated bots and botnets—to interact with advertisements online. They do this by simulating legitimate users into clicking ads, visiting pages, and (in some instances) creating fake form submissions.
While it is common knowledge that fraud earnings of this sort are inflated via automated means, some claim that a significant portion of ad click traffic is generated by actual people (low-wage workers). Furthermore, some form of fraud involves ads that are never seen in the wild by Internet users and ads that publishers intentionally misrepresent. Regardless of how click fraud is played, the objective of people and organizations behind them varies. The most obvious one is to generate high profit, the less obvious one is to incriminate or damage the profit of competitors.