Ad-fraud study flags up to 34% invalid ChatGPT ad clicks

Ad-verification vendor TrafficGuard said invalid-click rates on ChatGPT ads ranged from 0.1% to 34% by advertiser, per PPC Land, in an analysis of 40,021 ChatGPT ad clicks across 78 websites run by 47 enterprise advertisers between August 24 and September 14, 2026. Hosting, proxy and malicious-IP traffic made up 3.34% of ChatGPT ad clicks versus 0.92% of the same advertisers’ Google Ads clicks over the same period, and four hosting and proxy networks reached 25 of the 47 advertisers while driving 47% of flagged clicks. TrafficGuard’s figures count clicks that reached advertiser websites, not clicks OpenAI billed for, leaving open how much of the flagged traffic advertisers were actually charged for.