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SupportPPC arbitrage is a sophisticated form of click fraud that silently drains your ad budget Here’s how to fight back. You've built a powerful Google Ads campaign. The clicks are coming in, but the conversions aren't, and your budget is evaporating faster than expected. You're likely a victim of one of the oldest and most damaging schemes in digital advertising: PPC Arbitrage.
Özgül Yavuz Kaddoura
PPC Arbitrage & Click Fraud: Your 2025 Guide
The 2025 Arbitrage Playbook: How Fraudsters Operate
The methods have evolved far beyond the simple "dummy sites" of the past. Today's fraudsters use a sophisticated network of "Made for Advertising" (MFA) websites. These are low-quality sites that exist for the sole purpose of displaying ads. They are often filled with clickbait articles, slideshows, or generic content, and plastered with ad units.
Here's their four-step playbook:
Buy Cheap, Low-Intent Traffic: The fraudster buys massive volumes of dirt-cheap traffic from low-quality ad networks, pop-up ads, or social media clickbait campaigns. This audience has no intention of buying anything.
Funnel Traffic to MFA Sites: This cheap traffic is directed to their network of MFA websites.
Display Your High-Value Ads: Through the Google Display Network or Search Partner Network (which are often included in Performance Max campaigns), your high-cost ads (e.g., "financial services," "luxury travel") are displayed on these MFA sites.
Induce or Force Clicks: The site is designed to trick the user into clicking an ad. Sometimes, the clicks are even generated by bots that the fraudster directs to their own sites. You pay the high Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for a valuable keyword, and the fraudster (as the publisher) gets a share of that revenue from Google.
What is PPC Arbitrage?
At its core, Pay Per Click Fraud known as PPC Arbitrage is the practice of buying cheap traffic and selling it for a higher price. Think of it like a stock market trader who buys a stock for $1 and sells it for $10. In digital advertising, the "stock" is a website visitor.
The fraudster’s entire business model is to buy website visitors for pennies and get them to click on ads—your ads—that pay out dollars. The difference is their profit.
The Devastating Impact on Your Business
Wasted Ad Spend: This is the most obvious impact. A significant portion of your budget is siphoned off by publishers with no intention of providing real customers. Your money is spent on clicks that will never, ever convert.
Corrupted Data & Flawed AI: Your analytics are flooded with junk traffic. Your CTR might look high, but your conversion rate, bounce rate, and session duration will be terrible. This poisons the data that Google's Smart Bidding algorithms rely on, causing even the best PPC Optimisation Tool to make poor decisions.
Damaged Brand Reputation: Your brand's ads appearing on low-quality, spammy MFA sites can damage your reputation and associate your business with untrustworthy content.
The ClickSambo: A Strategic, Two-Stage Defense
Our algorithms use behavioral analysis, device fingerprinting, and VPN/proxy detection to identify and block the most obvious fraudulent traffic in real-time. This is our automated first line of defense, and it works by adding the fraudulent IP address to your account's exclusion list.
We Provide the Intelligence: Acting as one of your most critical PPC Analytics Tools, ClickSambo analyzes all your traffic and provides you with a clear, actionable report of the specific websites and mobile apps (placements) that are sending you high volumes of fraudulent or low-quality traffic.
You Take Control: You can take this "blocklist" of domains and add it directly to your 'Placement Exclusions' list in your Google Ads campaign settings.
Don't Just Play Defense—Go on the Offensive
Stop funding fraudulent publishers and ensure your ad budget is spent on reaching real customers
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Frequently asked questions
Is PPC Arbitrage technically "illegal"?
It is not a criminal offense, but it strictly violates Google’s "Abusing the Ad Network" and "Valueless Inventory" policies. It undermines the ecosystem by forcing high-cost clicks from low-intent users.
What is an MFA site and how do I spot one?
MFA (Made for Advertising) sites have zero original content and are packed with ad units. You can spot them in your placement reports by looking for sites with a 95%+ bounce rate and high CTR but zero conversions.
How does ClickSambo detect human-driven arbitrage?
Standard filters catch bots; ClickSambo uses Behavioral Biometrics. If a user arrives from a known MFA referrer and exhibits "forced" behavior (instant clicking without reading), we flag the source for exclusion.
Can I just turn off the Search Partner Network?
While you can, you often lose high-quality volume. A smarter strategy is using ClickSambo to surgically exclude only the fraudulent MFA domains, keeping the legitimate reach.
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