Fake conversion

A conversion is the outcome an advertiser actually wants. Because so much automated bidding now optimises towards conversions, faking them has become valuable.

In search arbitrage the term matters at two points in the chain. Downstream, the advertiser who bought the search click may receive bot-filled forms or bogus sign-ups designed to make bad clicks look productive, which hides the problem for a while. Upstream, the arbitrageur reports its own "conversions" (usually feed ad clicks and their revenue) back to Meta, TikTok or Google through a postback or Conversions API. If those events are inflated, duplicated or fired without a real click, the platform's algorithm is trained on fiction, and the platform's rules on accurate event data are broken.

Red flags include conversion counts that exceed clicks, events that fire at the instant of page load, round-number bursts, and "customers" whose details are random or repeated.

The defence is reconciliation: match every reported conversion to a real click, a real session and, eventually, real money in the finalised revenue report. See also lead fraud.

Think of it like this

It is a salesman logging phantom orders to hit his target. The numbers look splendid until the warehouse finds nothing to ship.