Mobile advertising is at an all-time high and shows no signs of slowing down.
Rapid internet penetration and mobile usage have prompted advertisers to allocate a larger budget to mobile advertising. But like other things online, it comes with many challenges, mainly mobile ad fraud in the form of click injection.
Click injection is a digital crime that defrauds advertisers, publishers, and supply partners by exploiting their app technology.
Click injection is a sophisticated attribution fraud in which scammers manipulate last-click attribution to steal credit from the actual source of an install.
It’s a big threat to the app industry and costly for affected businesses. Click injection is estimated to affect over a quarter of all mobile advertising campaigns worldwide. Followed by SDK spoofing, click injection cases increased to 27% globally in 2018.
Fraudsters make money from click injection, while marketers lose valuable campaign budgets. It hurts not only campaign ROI but also a brand's credibility.
Click injection is like installing a hidden spy camera in marketing campaigns. It’s one of the most advanced click spamming activities on Android phones.
Scammers rely on click spamming to get credit for the last click in a cost-per-install (CPI) campaign. They download an app on Android smartphones that monitors activity and alerts scammers when users download a new app. They then send users fake clicks just before the installation process is complete.
As standard practice, ad publishers are billed a predefined rate each time their application is installed. However, click injection falsely credits the installer payout to the scammers. Scammers use AI or a network of bad bots to click multiple ads multiple times and generate more clicks.
Click injection impacts every stakeholder in the mobile advertising ecosystem. However, the consequences may vary. Click injection degrades the end-user experience and negatively affects the reputation of networks, publishers, and advertisers, in addition to financial losses.
Click injection steals the credit of an installation operated by a real network or publisher. This further impacts their revenue as they don’t receive app install revenue; it instead goes to the fraudsters.
The advertiser is the party worst affected by this threat. The installations, designed to bring impressive results from a campaign, end up sending the credit to scammers.
Click-injection fraud unfolds in multiple ways, impacting an advertiser’s ROI and brand reputation. First, they pay the network or publisher based on last-click attribution, even if the installs were organic. This black box further impacts an advertiser's decision-making as they act based on skewed data, affecting their overall performance and wasting ad spending on rogue installs.
Moreover, companies run CPI campaigns simultaneously on multiple ad networks. Multiple campaigns on the line require ad protection on different platforms. Higher CPI markets like the US are at an even greater risk of click-injection fraud as the financial gains are higher.
Here are some adverse effects of click injection for advertisers:
Click injection is a harmful and widespread mobile ad fraud; it’s imperative that you protect your brand from it.
Sophisticated click-injection frauds elude even experienced digital marketers. The AI-powered bots and intelligent apps make separating a fake installation from a genuine download difficult.
This technique won’t spare any advertising campaign, whether a big-budget brand or a smaller one. The most effective and recommended option is to provide advanced ad traffic validation to eliminate and protect the ad campaigns throughout the marketing/advertising funnel. This ensures brands don’t lose advertising budgets, potential revenue, and even credibility from day one.
Don't let click fraud drain your resources. Know how to protect your digital advertising. Learn about the signs of click fraud and the best ways to prevent it.
Collect click data and identify unusual click impressions. Protect your traffic from malicious actors with click fraud software.
Jagmeet Singh is an anti-fraud expert at mFilterIt. He has a keen eye for marketing and brings his innovative insights for ad fraud specializing in apps. His sheer interest lies in weeding out app fraud and adding trust to the digital ecosystem.
Collect click data and identify unusual click impressions. Protect your traffic from malicious actors with click fraud software.
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