I know this is a loaded term, but I find it interesting that globalization plays a key role here. I would be surprised if the economics of click farms made sense without involving third-world employees generated ad revenue in first-world denominations.
Better wages in those countries would likely eliminate fraud like this. It's essentially an arbitrage opportunity to buy first-world denominated "attention currency" at third world click farm worker attention prices.
Right. And one way to combat that is IP geolocation, show your ads only to a first world audience. Of course, then a VPN or other IP spoofing techniques will combat that.
A friend-of-a-friend supposedly bought a bunch of cheap Android phones and ran apps that pay you to watch ads. IIRC it was only worth a couple hundred bucks a month.
The amount keeps going down. In 2012, you could make into the hundreds a day. In 2014, you could make over a grand or two grand a month. In 2016, $500 or so. Until you get to 2019 when the number became pretty low. And so on.
Also, if you can make a couple hundred a month. Then with just that info alone, there’s nothing but equivalent phones, an IP address, and bandwidth stopping you from doing that amount again.
Better wages in those countries would likely eliminate fraud like this. It's essentially an arbitrage opportunity to buy first-world denominated "attention currency" at third world click farm worker attention prices.