- Vector type:
- Financial Fraud & Data Pollution
- Risk level:
- Low to Moderate
- Impact level:
- Moderate to High
Being intended to waste the target’s advertising budget, this is perhaps the oldest and simplest of the Negative Digital Marketing attacks.
The concept is simple: Click on your competitor’s advert and then simply “bounce” back to the SERPs. Do this repeatedly, from different networks, devices, locations, etc. to seriously deplete your victim’s advertising budget.
Over the years, advertisers have developed sophisticated filtration systems to identify fraudulent clicks and eliminate their effect on ad-spend, but the simple fact is that a determined, sophisticated attack is likely to succeed, even now, in 2024.
Defense
There is literally no defense against a Click-Fraud attack, as you’re 100% reliant on the Google systems or your 3rd-party ad-provider to catch and prevent fraudulent behavior and clicks. The only action open to you is to closely monitor ad/site activity for rapid bounces and other anomalous “user” behaviors.