Click fraud is the act of clicking on an ad with the intention of  falsely inflating a publisher's revenue or artificially depleting the  budget of a competitor. Like most crimes, it comes in degrees. On the smallest scale, a  competitor of a pay-per-click advertiser may maliciously click on a  competitor's ad to drive up the competitor's costs. This type of  click fraud is fairly easily detected and actively prevented by most  networks. On a larger scale, fraudsters may employ real people to click on a  pay-per-click ad. These programs, often called paid to read/surf,  promise members money and other rewards for clicking on ads. The  users are committing click fraud even though they probably have no  idea what click fraud is or the effect it has on online marketing. Again on a larger scale, clickbots are available to for download.  Clickbots create fraudulent clicks by following normal traffic