The long-term incentives for ad companies like Google are aligned with the advertisers. They only profit from fraudulent clicks in the short term. Every fraudulent click they charge an advertiser for increases the likelihood that advertiser's campaign has a negative ROI and they stop advertising. The lost future revenue is a much larger number than the revenue from today's clicks.
As if Google doesn't have algorithms in place to keep ROI just high enough to incentivize ad spends even in the face of fraud. They have -just enough- incentive to do just enough, but how much of that fraud works its way into Google's coffers? I think that's what the poster is talking about.
The motivation is a monthly paycheck from an ad network without having to build a real audience for your website. If you can generate fake views and clicks at a lower cost than the network pays you, and convince the network the bot-generated activity is genuine, you're printing money.
> What is the benefit for bots that are hitting other people's sites?
That's the "convince the network the bot-generated activity is genuine" part. A site where all the "people" clicking ads are never seen on other sites stands out like a sore thumb. Having a bunch of background benign-looking activity lets you hide other kinds of fraud, too: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/07/service-drains-competitor...
This makes sense, thanks. It also assumes that the entire org is aligned with the long term goals. Couldn't short term gains be worthwhile for some group, at some time?
