Description: The mobile ad fraud detection and prevention software allows you to detect mobile ad fraud. Mobile ads offer higher ROI than other marketing channels and detecting mobile ad fraud is important if you want that investment to be as low as possible. In this article, we cover What Mobile Ad Fraud is and How You Can Deal With It.
What Is Mobile Ad Fraud and How Can You Deal With It?
Only mobile advertising has increased by over tenfold in the last four years and mobile ad fraud is a major concern. Product volatility and mobile data growth are some of the reasons for this growth, but mobile ad fraud is also a contributing factor. It’s estimated that mobile ad fraud makes up 20% of mobile ad traffic worldwide. Mobile advertising can be broken down into two categories such as media and programmatic advertising. Media-based mobile advertising includes mobile display ads while programmatic mobile advertising involves engagement, mobile application, and mobile video ads.
Programmatic mobile advertising has increased mobile ad fraud more than any other mobile advertising platform due to its advanced technology and real-time nature. This type of mobile ad fraud involves third-party data centers posing as legitimate mobile publishers and placing mobile ads on their network in order to generate revenue. Below we cover What is Ad Fraud and how best to deal with it.
What Is Mobile Ad Fraud?
Mobile ad fraud is the act of mobile advertisers generating mobile ads that are fraudulent. They do this by mimicking mobile publishers while stealing mobile publisher inventory or harvesting mobile publishers’ mobile traffic to create mobile ads against their own inventory.
5 Types Of Mobile Ad Fraud
In mobile ad fraud, mobile advertisers generate mobile ads that are fraudulent by mimicking mobile publishers while stealing mobile publisher inventory or harvesting mobile publishers’ mobile traffic to create mobile ads against their own inventory. Here are 5 types of mobile ad fraud:
- Ad Stacking
- Mobile Fraud Bots
- Click Fraud
- CPA Fraud
- SDK Spoofing
Below we cover these 5 types of mobile ad fraud in more detail.
Ad Stacking
Ad stacking is a mobile ad fraud activity whereby mobile advertisers enter into mobile publishers’ mobile ads to stack other mobile ads within the mobile publisher’s mobile ad space. This type of mobile ad fraud is mainly used to generate revenues for mobile advertisers and can be done without the knowledge of mobile publishers.
Mobile ad stacking happens when a third-party data center sells space on its network to mobile advertisers with no control. The third-party data center then places mobile ads for the mobile advertiser onto the platform posing as legitimate mobile publishers and getting paid for it. Mobile ad stacking is most popular with mobile apps because developers have a bigger advantage in controlling how their apps can be advertised.
Mobile Fraud Bots
Mobile fraud bots are mobile applications that mobile advertisers use to generate mobile ads. Mobile fraud bots can be mobile applications or websites that mobile advertisers access to create mobile ads. The mobile fraud bot crawls the mobile display ad inventory, generating mobile advertisements for each mobile ad space in order to simulate the act of mobile jacking. This form of mobile ad fraud is one of the most common ones used by mobile advertisers to generate revenues for their mobile apps/websites.
Click Fraud
Click fraud is a form of mobile ad fraud and can be defined as when an individual clicks on an advertising link with the intention of generating profit. Click fraud in mobile ads isn’t restricted to mobile phones and tablets, but can occur with any mobile device and browser, including mobile games and apps.
Advertisers are used to paying for ads that are actually seen by consumers, but they don’t want to pay for ad impressions that weren’t just accidental or unintended. This situation can arise where advertisers serve display advertisements on their mobile website without showing the ads on the mobile webpages themselves.
CPA Fraud
CPA fraud is mobile ad fraud that involves a mobile app publisher being paid-for mobile app installs using fraudulent credit card transactions which have been illegally acquired. In other words, the mobile app publisher creates an advertisement on a mobile application store for a mobile app that promises a specific return on investment, but then the mobile app publisher doesn’t deliver or actively tampers with the mobile app to ensure it’s not successful.
SDK Spoofing
SDK spoofing is mobile ad fraud on mobile games where mobile game developers create mobile game versions of popular mobile games. Mobile game developers often use the same SDK (software development kit) to make new versions of mobile games. SDK spoofing can happen when mobile game publishers take one mobile game kit and then use it to create multiple mobile versions of the same game, or they can tweak it to create a completely different mobile game.
For mobile game developers, SDK spoofing can cost them up to $1.5 million a month in mobile ad revenue losses.
Ways To Prevent Mobile Ad Fraud?
You can prevent mobile ad fraud by making sure to use the following mobile practices:
- Develop mobile websites, mobile apps, mobile games, and mobile ads with a security mindset.
- Make mobile site visitors/users take a security check before viewing or downloading your mobile content.
- Implement a mobile anti-malware policy that focuses on preventing mobile content from being delivered to malicious server domains.
- Deploy mobile ad networks with tools that detect and block click fraud activities. The tool should also include a platform to identify hotspots that are vulnerable to mobile ad fraud activities.
Fortunately, you can prevent mobile ad fraud by making sure to use the following mobile practices. You should also make your site visitors take a security check before viewing or downloading any content on your mobile website and deploy mobile networks with tools that detect click fraud activities in order to block them from occurring altogether.
Conclusion
Developers should make sure to use security-minded mobile website development when developing mobile content and implement anti-malware policies that focus on preventing mobile content from being delivered malicious server domains. You also need to deploy mobile networks with tools that detect unethical marketing activities in order to block them from occurring altogether. These mobile practices will help you prevent the occurrence of these types of mobile ad fraud in your own digital marketing strategy and ensure your customers are getting what they’re paying for – quality products or services!
On top of mobile advertising, you need quality SEO for your company as well. By looking into SEO audit services you can ensure organic traffic is monitored to ensure no malicious attacks damage your site.