Ad fraud is a morally loaded term. What's considered ad fraud is not fraud, but labeling it as such lets advertisers point to individuals running bots and scripts as malicious internet abusers. If I used the term fraud like the ad industry uses ad fraud, I'd probably lose my law license or just get buried under unfavourable costs orders in court.

So why are they deploying the term? Because it's a great way to deflect thinking about a core failing of their business logic. We've known since the day of banner ads that 'views' are a tremendously flawed metric, so blaming online agents for WHY they're flawed lets them deflect blame.

The fact that we're in this thread trying to parse semantics when consumers don't even have a seat at the table when deciding where we should fall on the tracking/privacy spectrum should tell you all you need to know about how the industry operates.