Policy & compliance · also called Incentivized click, Rewarded click, Paid-to-click
Incentivised click
An incentivised click is a click or search someone makes because they were offered a reward, not because they wanted what the ad sells.
An advertiser pays for a search-ad click because it signals interest. If the person clicked to earn points, coins, a prize draw entry or to unlock content, that signal is false. The click costs the advertiser money and almost never turns into a customer.
Google's AFS policies state plainly that publishers may not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, and the wider AdSense Program policies ban paid-to-click programmes and any wording that urges people to click ads. The MRC standards also list incentivised manipulation among the forms of SIVT.
For an arbitrageur the risk is often indirect. A cheap traffic source may quietly be a rewards app or a "get paid to browse" site. The red flags are very high Lander CTR and Ad CTR combined with weak advertiser conversions, then a falling RPC or a clawback a few weeks later. See also incentivised traffic.
Think of it like this
It is like paying people to walk into a shop so the footfall counter looks good. The shop is full, but nobody is buying.
Related terms
Incentivised traffic
Incentivised traffic is visitors who came because they were rewarded with points, cash or perks, not because they cared about the page or its ads.
Invalid click
An invalid click is a click on an ad that does not reflect genuine interest in the advertiser, so the advertiser should not be charged for it.
AFS program policies
AFS program policies are Google's rules for anyone showing its search ads on their own site, covering where queries come from, how ads are placed and what traffic is acceptable.
Click fraud
Click fraud is deliberately generating ad clicks with no real interest behind them, to earn publisher revenue or to drain an advertiser's budget.
Traffic source approval
Traffic source approval is a feed provider's sign-off that a particular place you buy visitors from is allowed to send traffic to its search feed.
Sources: Google AdSense Help: AdSense for Search (AFS) policies, Google AdSense Help: AdSense Program policies, MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Standards Addendum (June 2020 update)