Bots enable hackers to take control of many computers at a time and turn them into zombie computers that can spread viruses, generate spam and commit other types of online crime, including ad fraud. There are armies of bots viewing and clicking on ads, creating huge volumes of fake traffic that result in large sums of advertising dollars for fraudsters and less-than-diligent publishers. Advertisers will lose an estimated $19 billion as a result fraud in 2018, according to Juniper Research (via Which-50.com). It will take sophisticated ad technology and proven traffic cleaning methodologies to prevent bots from taking over. Bots are also growing in number because they are humanlike in that they can successfully stay under the radar.

Source: Forbes November 30, 2017 12:22 UTC