And imagine how much more you’d have to pay for each of those clicks if everyone could stop those fraudulent clicks. In equilibrium it shouldn’t change the total ad spend.
Fake clicks give the illusion that ads are working and instead you have to optimize your funnel or whatever else.
The point here, for me, is that a microeconomic perspective on this whole question is more salient than a purely technical one.
I am fine with spending $10,000 on ads (or whatever amount).
The issue is that when I know $5,000 of it was spent on clicks that had 0% chance to convert. For every fraudulent click I can block/prevent that is one more click that can be made by a real person who may actually make a purchase.
The online ad market is extremely inefficient because it has no idea how much ad spend is even reaching people.