There’s a lot of metrics around advertising and measuring these can be demanding, especially in the Mobile Advertising ecosystem.

It’s also the reason why fraudsters have made this their favorite target to mint Ad Dollars. 2019 witnessed loss in Billions with Ad Fraud on the rise, leaving advertisers clueless to figure out a proper solution to combat this threat. Surprisingly the plague around the Mobile Ad Industry is still spreading due to the lack of awareness of various fraud activities.

There are a lot of marketing platforms equipped with the latest tech out there & are still vulnerable to fraudsters as this wicked buch are finding ways to deceive & exploit the Ad Tech system.

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These are the most two common methods that Fraudsters use everyday to snipe quick bucks: 

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1. Cost Per Impression Fraud

Ad Stacking: It’s a fraud technique where multiple Display Ads are stacked on top of one another in a single ad placement. This  layer of Ads isn’t visible to the user, instead the user gets to view only the top Ad. In this process CPM is calculated for all Ads in the layers and the advertisers are charged for fake Ad impressions. This is also known as View Fraud.

Invisible Pixels: This technique includes the Ads being stuffed in a 1x1 pixel, which are invisible to the user but it’s still counted as an impression & the advertiser is charged.

Unstoppable or Self-Loading Ads: Installed Apps are tweaked and manipulated to load Ads continuously, even when the app is not in use.

Auto-Play Videos: The Video Ads are played automatically in the background by the fraudsters, when the users aren’t even aware or watching the Ad.

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2. Cost Per Click Frauds

Ad Page Redirection: This is very common in domains with lower quality, like the ones with Pirated or Aggregated content, where even without the user intent, a click is counted and then the fraudster maliciously redirects the user to the Ad’s landing page. In some cases the user ends up taking action and the CPC is falsely attributed to the domain owner/publisher.

Deceptive Ads: While tinkering the web you might have come across advertisements  with a warning or an alert sign or Ads that showcase a product and  when you click on it you land on a totally irrelevant page. These Ads often have a close or X button, which is used to trick the user to click, when they are actually trying to close the Ad. Such Ads end up deceiving both the users as well as the advertisers.

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‍There are various more methods that Fraudsters use to disrupt Mobile Advertising & reap profits for themselves.  You can find more sophisticated ways of Fraud in this article.