Mobile ad fraud increases across all verticals in 2020
David Hartery, Senior Content Marketing Editor, Adjust, Dec 03, 2020.
With mobile app usage surging during COVID-19, Adjust data indicates ad fraud rates have also been rising alongside. We recently took a deep dive into our Fraud Prevention Suite data, analyzing more than 14.3 billion installs globally, to reveal which methods have been most commonly employed between January and August 2020. Our research showed that fake users/bots are still the most prevalent fraud type in the mobile ad ecosystem, making up 54.6% of total fraudulent activity globally. This figure increases to 68.7 % in the US and 65.6% in China and represents 47% for EMEA.
Other key findings include:
- Globally, fraud rates in gaming have increased by 172.95% between August 2019 and 2020, with the US seeing a surge of 310.29% in the same timeframe.
- Click Injections and Click Spam are the two most common fraud methods in entertainment apps, representing 22.45% and 34.63% of rejected installs.
- SDK Spoofing still dominates LATAM and is most prevalent in food & drink and business apps, representing 59.7% and 34.9% of rejected installs respectively.
Fake organic metrics are on the rise
MarTechSeries also reported on the findings, highlighting that fraudsters are faking organic traffic in addition to paid installs. Overall, organic users are usually of higher quality than paid users - with higher retention and a higher lifetime value than their paid counterparts. While mobile marketers are not technically losing money on these faked organic installs, they can compromise data integrity. And when data is corrupted, marketers run a higher risk of wasting their ad spend on the wrong marketing activities.
Fraud prevention is key
With brands investing more in mobile than ever before, fraudsters are also getting smarter in their attempts to steal ad spend. Using fraud prevention filters is the only way to stop fraud in its tracks, helping you save your UA budget and keeping your data sets clean and reliable. From there, you'll be able to acquire better and more valuable users while identifying your best-performing channels. With our Fraud Prevention Suite, you can detect and prevent fraud in real time, rejecting fraud before attributing it.
If you're interested in gaining more insight into the fight against ad fraud, you can read The Adjust guide to mobile ad fraud. And If you'd like to find out how our Fraud Prevention Suite can safeguard your campaigns, get in touch with us here.