Fraudulent traffic
Fraudulent traffic is traffic and leads created not by real interest but for the sake of a payout: bots, fake applications, incentivized actions, source spoofing.
In plain words
Ad fraud is deception in advertising. The advertiser pays for clicks, applications or actions, but there are no real people with real interest behind them. The money goes, the clients do not come.
Types
- Bot traffic: clicks and applications are generated by software.
- Fake leads: someone else’s or invented contacts, numbers that do not exist or belong to people who never applied.
- Incentivized traffic: people are paid or given a bonus for the action and do not need the product itself.
- Source spoofing: traffic is passed off as coming from one channel when it actually comes from another that the offer forbids.
Warning signs for the buyer
Sudden spikes of applications from one partner. Many numbers where nobody answers, or people answer that they never applied. Repeated data, applications at unusual hours. High page conversion with almost zero conversion to payment. People in chats do not understand what it is about.
Why it is dangerous
The direct loss is paying for something that does not exist. The indirect losses are sales reps’ time spent on empty conversations, distorted analytics and wrong budget decisions. If fake leads contain contacts of real people who never gave consent, you may face complaints, and the numbers you message from may be restricted by messengers. Legal consequences depend on the country, so check with a lawyer.
How to reduce the risk
A hold period with quality checks during it. Separate statistics for each partner. Clear offer rules on forbidden sources. Honest status reporting with rejection reasons.
More in Signals
- Sales team motivation: what to pay for when sales happen in chatSales motivation works when the variable pay is tied to money actually paid, not to activity: message counts and time online are easy to inflate. You need a clear formula, a fair way of assigning clients and every rep seeing their own results. Non-cash motivation in chat means recognizing specific conversations, not saying generic words.
- Are messenger broadcasts legal: the consent that saves the number and the companyA messenger broadcast is legal where the recipient has consented to such messages and the platform's rules and the country's advertising and personal-data law are respected. Consent isn't a checkbox for its own sake — it's a trail: when, to what, and how a person agreed. Without it, numbers are lost to complaints fastest, and the company answers, not the platform.