Ad fraud is a constant in performance marketing. The good news is that most fraudulent traffic leaves fingerprints in the data — if you know where to look and look regularly.
Common types of mobile ad fraud
- Click spamming: huge volumes of fake clicks in the hope of claiming credit for organic installs.
- Click injection: a malicious app detects when another app is being installed and fires a click just before it opens.
- Install farms: real devices operated at scale to generate installs with no genuine user behind them.
- SDK spoofing: fake install and event signals sent directly to measurement servers, with no device involved at all.
Warning signs in your reports
Look at click-to-install time (CTIT). Real users usually take somewhere between a few seconds and several minutes to install after clicking. A spike of installs within a few seconds can point to click injection; a long, flat tail stretching over many hours can indicate click spamming.
Compare conversion rates and post-install behaviour by source. A sub-publisher with a very low click-to-install rate, near-zero day-1 retention or no in-app events at all deserves a closer look.
Weekly checks worth running
- CTIT distribution by source and sub-source
- Day-1 and day-7 retention compared with your organic baseline
- Event rates per install by source
- Device, OS version and IP concentration
- Fraud rejection reports from your mobile measurement partner
Fraud protection isn't a one-time setting. Make it part of the weekly optimisation rhythm, pause anything suspicious quickly, and agree upfront with partners how invalid traffic will be handled.