A week before the release of his latest album, a renowned Bollywood singer contacted an online broker to promote the album. For a sum, the singer wanted 5 lakh views for the song teaser on YouTube and 25,000 likes on any Facebook update he would put up.Over the next three days, likes, comments and shares poured in for the song. But where did all that traffic come from? The answer is click farms : a mix of online click-bots and low skilled individuals watching, liking and commenting on the videos through multiple fake accounts in remote locations across the world.And business, for click farms is booming. Not just celebrity singers, movie stars, startups, struggling publications and even political parties are buying and generating bogus likes on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and product reviews from click farms.“In addition to people working day and night tapping on posts, we also use bots to create fake profiles on social media platforms which go about clicking and sharing posts numerous times,” said Jean, a broker for an outsourced click farm in Russia, who facilitated the deal for the singer. “The usage of bots depends upon how much customers can pay which ranges between $2 to 12$ for 10000 likes/shares,” said the 25-year old who declined to share his second name."I have got many requests from celebrities in Bollywood, Sports and Youtube personalities who wanted to increase their shares, likes, and ad clicks,” he said, pointing out that the rate for 10,000 views in two days would cost the client $12.And not all click farming is outsourced. Take the case of a Bangalore-based online educational startup which creates video tutorials on high-tech courses like big-data analytics, machine learning and the like. “Inorganically our company employees like, share, and comment through fake accounts so that our video would come as top search results suggestion,” said a marketing employee of the startup who did not want to be named. How does the company do this? For starters, the company has hundreds of fake accounts – most of them with impressive pedigrees.“On a single day, we get 10,000 new users click on the links posted through fake profiles. We create fake profiles with impressive biographies like engineering from IIT Kharagpur and MBA from IIM-Bangalore. When an alumnus from IIT endorses a video on data analytics in a study group, it is more credible,” the employee said. In a given month, the startup earns up to Rs. 12 lakhs through fake promotion.The fake clicks market is a profitable breakthrough for bouquet firms which thrive of the crumbs of online marketing of startups and celebrities. Though there is no macro data on the money spent on ‘artificial’ promotion, the moolah is in the tune of millions making them ‘ internet war dogs’.Industry watchers believe that click farms are here to stay. “Acceleration of click farms happened in the last 2-3 years where companies are trying to capture mindshare through clicks. From just individuals doing clicks for a small amount, click farms have taken a business connotation today. This is likely to grow twice as the segment grows,” said Tarun Pathak, Associate director at Counterpoint Research.“The sophistication of click frauds is also increasing like bots on Instagram that are being engaged by brands, for a fee, for promotion,” said Karthik Srinivasan, National Lead, Social, Ogilvy & Mather. “There are click farms that hire college students and create fake accounts to generate clicks”.Another area where click farms are booming is e-commerce. “Sellers on e-commerce platforms too contact us to provide good reviews for their products,” said a person who did not want to be named. “We also get requests to click on competitors ads to exhaust their ad spend at the earliest”.Most businesses set aside a specific amount as digital marketing spend, which is paid to companies like Google and Facebook, everytime a user clicks on their ad online. Companies engage click farms to exhaust the marketing budgets of rivals through fake clicks.“One of our retail customers suddenly reached out to us pointing out a sudden surge in visitors on their site. Around 45,000 visitors on the site in a span of 24 hours,” said Rahul Vengalil, Founder of digital marketing firm, WhatClicks, a digital marketing firm. "We have deployed a code which differentiates unwanted clicks from bots and clicks farms which add no value to the digital marketing spend of our customer," Vengalil added.Political parties too have also caught onto click farming. A national party has deployed 200 people, who are paid about Rs 8,000 a month, just to click and share positive posts and images about the party. "This is our distributed model of click farms, where foot soldiers of the party generate massive shares which help in spreading the ideology of the party leaders," said Rajiv, who did not want to be identified. "It’s a part-time job for these guys. The list includes college students, shop owners and even regular 9 to 5 officer goers.While ‘fakes’ are one of the myriad problems that bedevil the internet, the urgency to be noticed has prompted upcoming models to take this route to be famous. Chennai-based model Rachita has been doing freelance photo shoots for about a year-and-a-half. “I had increased my online following on Instagram to upto 5000 for better reach and opportunities to build my portfolio. There are several websites which offer immediate ‘likes’ for a small amount,” she said.When ET reached out to people claiming to sell Facebook followers, we found that the price depends on the demand from customers. One such seller told us that he can sell 6000 likes for Rs. 1200 and get it done within 5 hours. Another seller promised us 1 million followers for an upfront payment of Rs. 11,000.“As the digital media marketing market grows, proportionally the fake/synthetic likes will grow,” Pathak says. The Kantar-IMRB and IAMAI report put digital marketing spend at the end of 2016 at Rs. 7,300 crore with a 40% growth over 2015. India stands 10th in the list of top 20 countries affected by mobile app install fraud.Most social networking platforms like Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Youtube are using an arsenal of sophisticated techniques to keep ‘fakes’ in check using pattern matching and other techniques. But, the sophistication of fakes is also increasing.“There are bot-handles on Instagram that are being engaged by brands, for a fee, to promote their products,” Srinivasan said.The fight to weed out fakes is ongoing. "Facebook's improved automated efforts remove (fake) Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk Likes," the company said. "While we have always had dedicated protections against each of these threats on Facebook, these improved systems have been specifically configured to identify and take action against suspicious Likes."Better detection and faster removal of 'fakes' are driven by machine learning."Views generated by some third-party businesses and services will not be counted or reflected on YouTube, and leads to disciplinary action against the account, including removal of the video," Youtube said in their blog. "Recently, we found spamming issues associated with the view counts on a small number of videos. The inflated view count number on these videos will be frozen until actual views catch up to the published, artificial, view count."( Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.)