Editing Click fraud (section)

==Pay-per-click advertising==
{{Main|Pay-per-click}}
[[File:Made for Advertising (MFA) website.jpg|alt=An illustration of a "made-for-advertising" website from the book "Market-Oriented Disinformation Research" (p.139)|thumb|[https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003506676 An illustration of a "made for advertising" website that creates a hostile user experience] by Carlos Diaz Ruiz is licensed under [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CC BY 4.0]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Diaz Ruiz |first=Carlos |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003506676 |title=Market-Oriented Disinformation Research: Digital Advertising, Disinformation and Fake News on Social Media |date=2025-03-14 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-003-50667-6 |edition=1 |location=London |pages=139 |language=en |chapter=6. The AdTech Ecosystem and Programmatic Advertising |doi=10.4324/9781003506676}}</ref>]]PPC advertising is an arrangement in which [[webmaster]]s (operators of [[websites]]), acting as publishers, display clickable links from advertisers in exchange for a charge per click. As this industry evolved, a number of advertising networks developed, which acted as middlemen between these two groups (publishers and advertisers). Each time a (believed to be) valid Web user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays the advertising network, which in turn pays the publisher a share of this money. This revenue-sharing system is seen as an incentive for click fraud.

The largest of the advertising networks, [[Google]]'s [[AdWords]]/[[AdSense]] and [[Yahoo! Search Marketing]], act in a dual role, since they are also publishers themselves (on their search engines).<ref name=":0" /> According to critics, this complex relationship may create a conflict of interest. This is because these companies lose money to undetected click fraud when paying out to the publisher but make more money when collecting fees from the advertiser. Because of the spread between what they collect and pay out, unfettered click fraud would create short-term profits for these companies.<ref name=":0" />