In England and Wales, all three types of fraud covered by the 2006 Act have as substantive elements of the offence a requirement that a defendant intends to eit

In England and Wales, all three types of fraud covered by the 2006 Act have as substantive elements of the offence a requirement that a defendant intends to either "make a gain for himself or another" or "cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss", where gain and loss are defined as only referring to "money or other property". Note also that the offence is framed in terms of intention to gain or cause loss. Even if no material gain or loss happens, the intention is what matters. (The equivalent mental element for theft in England is that one dishonestly intends to permanently deprive someone of the property being taken.) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35 This applies to online ad 'click fraud' in both ways—if a publisher fraudulently clicks on adverts to make money, that'd potentially be fraud to make a gain for themselves. If a competitor clicks on adverts to get their competitor to lose money on pay-per-click, that'd potentially be fraud to cause a loss to another. I can't speak for jurisdictions other than England and Wales but I'd be surprised if a fair number of other jurisdictions didn't also define fraud in a way that covers both gain and loss scenarios.