How to Avoid Mobile Ad Fraud in 2022?

Starting from the introduction of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement revenue model in the late 90s to mobile apps shaping the future of digital advertising in the 2020s, the digital marketing industry is fighting a war with an insidious enemy, ad fraud. However, the sophistication of ad fraud tactics used in the mobile advertisement industry forced authorities and advertisers due to its alarming rate of frequency and magnitude.

Ad fraud is fueled by the growth and reach of the Internet and mobile devices have increased this ratio a considerable amount. This huge inclination to mobile also pawed the way for new and invasive tactics for the fraudsters and made mobile ad fraud a thing the leading tech brands and policymakers warn about quite frequently and seriously.

What is Mobile Ad Fraud

In short, mobile ad fraud works based on deceiving advertisers with false information either about impression amounts or the quality of the impression sources. For example, a seemingly successful mobile ad campaign might have automated bot farms operating inside, causing a surge of impressions. This falsifies and pollutes the valuable information you normally get from the organic user base and at the same time, drains the budget of the ad campaign at an alarming rate.

Another example, for the end-user side this time would be falsifying the information generated by the installation of an app with another malicious app that the user unsuspectingly installed beforehand. This malicious app registers every other click or install as a click or install for the marketed mobile app. It is quite hard to distinguish this activity from genuine organic interaction because all the data would be coming from a real person’s mobile phone with genuine device and provider info.

The Impact of Mobile Ad Fraud on Advertisers

Besides the obvious impact of a failed ad campaign, mobile ad fraud also has long-lasting side effects. The tactics of mobile ad fraud have two objectives; meeting the requirements of an ad campaign as fast as possible and being able to remain unnoticed and continue this parasitic process again and again. Unfortunately, the resulting performance metrics of these tactics combined also bear resemblance to the metrics of a successful ad campaign, of course with little to no publicity and monetary gain.
Moreover, those fabricated clicks and installs made by bot farms or unaware users will register as genuine user base only to go inactive after the install is made. Some fraudsters even go to the extent of reaching the post-install quality goals or in-app engagements and generate false quality metrics. This creates a pretense of a successful ad campaign and indulges advertisers to invest in those ad networks yet again, unnoticing the fraudulent activity happening, and losing the chance to reach legitimate users in the process.

How Can Interceptd Help Avoid Mobile Ad Fraud?

Ad networks provide advertisers with software to monitor the condition of their ad campaigns. However, the metrics provided there are somewhat obscure to understand and make a deduction of fraudulent activities besides checking for extreme values in CTIT (click to install times), impression to engagement rates. Crosschecking other basic information such as device model, country of origin, and network provider-country info might also be beneficial but takes a lot of time if done manually. Skimming these values might surface some questionable activity but as we mentioned earlier, mobile ad fraud tactics also got more intricate due to huge countermeasures taken by the information sector.

Now, that’s where the Interceptd Real-Time Fraud Prevention solution comes into play. After obtaining the performance metrics provided by the ad network, Interceptd processes those metrics with its fraud preventing algorithms and shows/updates the results in real-time on its easy-to-use interface. Equipped with many pre-determined alarms encompassing even the most complex types of ad fraud, Interceptd also allows setting customized block rules for sub-networks and alarms at your will. On top of that, Interceptd auto-notifies supply partners with concrete evidence in the case of mobile ad fraud, and on top of that, it also reveals ROAS & Savings with transparent reporting.

Final Words

Marketing through mobile mediums is continuing to gain influence over every other form of marketing day by day due to the ease of access it provides. Due to the constant growth of advertisement budgets and automatization of technologies for marketing, the attraction of fraudsters to this medium is expectedly increasing. Thus, learning about ad fraud, and the grim reality of the digital marketing industry is a start for every advertiser. Day by day, ad fraudsters’ strategies get complicated due to the size of the market they are operating. Understanding the importance of a reliable and relevant software solution such as Interceptd is the next step for protecting your company from ad fraud. To get more efficiency from your mobile ad campaigns and make an impactful difference in ad spend and higher yield, Interceptd is your go-to solution.