Mobile Ad Fraud: 8 Pain Points for Marketers

Even as the mobile advertising ecosystem expands, the situation of mobile ad fraud continues to remain a constant problem in the equation. According to a recent study, advertisers are most likely to lose around **$7.2 billion globally by the end of 2016** due to the rising cases of impression fraud, click fraud and install fraud.

This is a major concern as nowadays, most of the mobile ad spends are based on a CPI model. In fact, other cost models like PPC, PPM, CPR, CPT, etc. are also no exception to this problem as fraudsters are always looking for new tactics to break through the security vault and steal money from advertisers.

Given the magnitude of losses caused by such acts of fraud, it’s important for marketers to stay informed about the various routes through which fraudsters launch their attack.

For who knows, you might be actually paying for your organic installs?

So before burning money on clicks, make sure that you’re up to speed with the types of mobile ad fraud so that you can easily detect the quality of your traffic.

1) Geo-fraud or wrong targeting

This kind of a fraud can occur in the case of marketing campaigns, which target users from specific geographies or location. Here, marketers who spend money on purchasing geolocalized traffic are provided with false data that alters the device location from which clicks or installs are registered. In layman language, this is a case of wrong targeting for clicks, installs, or, any form of in-app activities. Instead of showing the ads to the targeted audience, they’re run on irrelevant networks that ultimately reduce conversions.

2) Fake impressions through ad stacking

Sometimes, marketers are tricked by using techniques that generate fake impressions of their ads for which they’re charged. This is usually done by showing two or three ads that coincide each other and appear on the same space. But only one of those ads are made visible to the users and still, the advertisers get charged. This can be taken as another instance of fraud.

3) Fraud using Spoofing

This is another technique that’s quite common amongst fraudsters for committing repeated fraud. In this case, hackers manipulate the device and browser of users to resemble a different device or browser. This results in multiple cases of clicks, downloads or installs from the same device whilst portraying and counting it as occurring from several other user devices or browsers.

How does it happen?

With the availability of large no. of apps that can change the settings of a mobile device to simulate a different set of configurations, spoofing has become quite convenient for fraudsters. These apps enable fraudsters to manipulate their mobile device settings so as to make it appear like a different mobile device. Similarly, tools like FraudFox can help fraudsters manipulate a browser’s fingerprint to match a different ID or generate a new ID.

4) Fake unique device IDs

Another resort available with cyber criminals is the use of manipulative tools or techniques, like device farms. This enables them to generate a large numbers of fake unique device IDs through which they tend to provide fake traffic or even, fake installs.

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