Media buyers are mostly wise to this old scam by now. First, you can simply measure the inbound traffic on the custom landing page for each ad buy, and it shou

Media buyers are mostly wise to this old scam by now. First, you can simply measure the inbound traffic on the custom landing page for each ad buy, and it should be comparable to number of clicks reported. Second, cost per click traffic is so cheap these days media buyers tolerate a lot of spillage, and complaining about excess spillage is answered immediately with deep discounts on CPC in order to keep the ad buyers happy. Third, if the ad campaign isn't delivering ROI then media buyers stop buying ads from the property, the property bleeds ad buyers and gradually the problem solves itself. Sounds to me like the company looking to be bought pumped up the stats presented to its suitors, and perhaps they do report these inflated stats to ad buyers as well, and then they probably give each ad buyer a deep discount on CPC so they won't complain about the gap between clicks reported compared to inbound traffic.