What is click validation?

Click validation is the process of ad partners validating clicks, so they can be verified as genuine clicks rather than fraudulent clicks. Ad partners do this by sharing impressions, showing that each click has a matching impression. The presence of a matching impression for each reported click confirms that an ad was shown to a user. Validating this fact helps to prevent click fraud from infiltrating a marketer’s data and claiming ad spend.

Fraudsters operating in the world of mobile advertising spend time honing sophisticated techniques to claim mobile marketing budgets with an unfair advantage. Not only does this present marketers with skewed data sets, it directly affects return on investment (ROI) and the ability to effectively optimize campaigns, and can bring the validity of attribution data into question. Mobile ad fraud of all types is detrimental to the continued growth and success of mobile advertising, so marketers rely on processes like click validation to have confidence in the data they see.

For a user to click on an ad, that user must be exposed to an ad. However, ad channels have the ability to click on an ad without informing their attribution partners of a valid impression. This increases the risk of fraudulent clicks being recorded, that (by validating each impression) would otherwise be rejected.

For their own analytics, network partners already track impression and ad delivery—so it’s entirely possible to share this data with attribution partners.

At Adjust, we make it our mission to provide our clients with data that is accurate, actionable, trustworthy, and always protected from mobile ad fraud. Click validation is standard across our measurement solutions—we mandate that ad partners share the data that confirms each click has a matching impression.

Ad networks send impression data to Adjust, along with unique identifiers that correspond to user clicks. By requesting an impression before the click, a matching engagement by the same device can be verified. This allows us to confirm a click was logically possible—a requirement that dramatically increases a fraudster’s workload. Click validation therefore leads to more accurate attribution and less budget wasted on ad fraud.