If you are an app marketer, you might relate to this situation.
“You launched an app campaign, on the surface, the metrics look promising, installs are going high, and the campaign performance looks good. But something is still not adding up.
Retention rates are lower than expected. Installs are spiking at odd hours from unfamiliar geographies. Your post-install events don’t reflect real user behavior. Even after constant re-engagement efforts, ROI still falls short, and your reporting starts to lose credibility within the team.
Despite investing heavily in your app campaigns to acquire new users and retain the existing ones, you are not getting the desired results. All this is a sign of a threat – mobile ad fraud.
Mobile ad fraud has evolved far beyond the install stage. Fraudsters now exploit loopholes at every stage of the app marketing funnel.
According to a first party analysis by mFilterIt of 196 campaigns run in 2024, a significant rise was seen in ad fraud in apps at each level of the funnel, highest being at the install stage at 43%, impressions at 20%, clicks at 17%, and events at 35%.
Moreover, app marketers relying on MMPs for fraud detection often fall short in identifying sophisticated and evolving forms of mobile ad fraud across the funnel.
Why Detection Methods by MMPs Don’t Work with Sophisticated Mobile Ad Fraud Techniques?
While sophisticated mobile app fraud tactics continue to siphon billions from global ad budgets, what’s even more alarming is the widespread reliance on traditional ad fraud protection tools and MMPs that only guard at the install stage.
Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) only track where installs come from and help attribute performance. They are not app fraud prevention platforms.
In fact, many MMPs:
- Rely on probabilistic or last-click attribution models that can be easily manipulated
- Do not block fraud proactively
- Have limited visibility into pre-install (e.g., impression fraud, click injection) and post-install fraud (e.g., fake purchases, re-engagement fraud)
Similarly, conventional mobile app fraud solutions often focus only on specific metrics like install anomalies but fail to provide the comprehensive coverage required to monitor the entire app user journey.
This fragmented approach may catch some fraud, but it doesn’t fix the root issue. What marketers need today is a unified app fraud detection solution that monitors, detects, and prevents fraud at every funnel touchpoint, ensuring that every dollar spent on mobile advertising is going toward actual user growth.
How the Full-Funnel Approach Brings Transparency for App Marketers?
Brands need to combat mobile ad fraud across the mobile marketing funnel, not just at the install validation stage. A full funnel mobile ad fraud protection strategy ensures proactive detection and filtration from ad impressions to re-engagement, ensuring clean traffic, optimized performance, and growth.
1. Pre-Install Stage: Ad Clicks & Impressions
The first encounter users have with your app is through ad impressions and clicks. However, this stage is often manipulated by fraudsters using click spamming, click injection, and impression fraud. Malicious actors generate illegitimate clicks or fake ad views, often in the background or through hidden placements, to falsely claim attribution.
A funnel protection strategy helps by separating genuine engagement from noise. An app fraud detection tool works proactively to stop suspicious activity before it impacts your campaign.
2. Install Stage: Verifying Real User Acquisition
At the point of install, mobile ad fraud tactics become more technically sophisticated. Fraudsters use SDK spoofing, device farms, and emulators to simulate real installs and collect payouts without delivering any real users.
This distorts your cost-per-install metrics and pollutes your user base with non-human traffic. Using AI & ML-based deeper-level filters ensures that only legitimate installs from real devices make it through.
3. Post-Install Events: Ensuring Engagement Authenticity
Once a user installs your app, the focus shifts to engagement, whether that’s completing registration, making a purchase, or triggering any other event. However, fake registrations, event spoofing, and simulated purchases are common tactics fraudsters use to inflate post-install metrics and claim undeserved payouts.
An app fraud protection solution closely monitors user behavior post-install to ensure only authentic engagement is counted.
4. Re-Engagement Campaigns: Driving Retention & Lifetime Value
Re-engagement campaigns are critical for driving retention and lifetime value. However, this stage is frequently exploited through organic poaching, where fraudsters claim credit for users who were already planning to return, and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT), which uses advanced bots to simulate user reactivation.
Without proper validation, your retargeting budget could be wasted on traffic that offers no incremental value. An ad fraud detection solution validates each click or event based on various parameters to ensure genuine user activity.
Ensuring End-to-End App Campaign Protection Across Funnel with mFilterIt
When it comes to combating mobile ad fraud, focusing solely on the install stage will not work. It is imperative to adopt full-funnel protection, focusing on detecting ad fraud and preventing it within the entire customer journey from the first impression to post-install and re-engagement interactions.
At mFilterIt, our ad fraud detection solution – Valid8- uses advanced behavioral analytics and proactive detection parameters, ensuring your entire app campaign is clean, credible, and cost-effective.
How Valid8 Detects Fraud at the Pre-Install Stage:
- Analyzes click-to-install time to detect click injection patterns.
- Identifies high-frequency, low-quality traffic bursts that indicate click spamming.
- Filters out non-viewable or bot-generated impressions to maintain media quality.
- Flags suspicious referrers or device behaviors using anomaly detection models.
The result is a cleaner top-of-funnel that safeguards your CPI investments and provides better insights for accurate attribution.
How Valid8 Detects Fraud at the Install Stage:
- Uses device fingerprinting to identify installs from emulators or rooted devices.
- Uses OS-level hardware signals to detect spoofed environments.
- Cross-validates installs based on behavioral patterns to confirm authenticity.
- Flags are installed from known fraudulent IPs or anomalous geolocations.
By validating every install, mFilterIt ensures that you’re paying for actual user acquisition, not empty metrics.
How Valid8 Detects Fraud at the Post-Install Stage:
- Tracks interaction sequences and timing to differentiate between humans and bots.
- Identifies non-human patterns like rapid event completion or unrealistic navigation flows.
- Validates in-app purchases and events against expected behavior models.
- Detects scripted activities designed to inflate retention or monetization metrics.
This level of scrutiny helps marketers optimize campaigns based on real engagement, not manipulated KPIs.
How Valid8 Detects Fraud at the Re-Engagement Stage:
- Applies inactivity window validation to check if a user has genuinely been inactive for a specific period before engaging with the re-engagement ad.
- Tracks complete user lifecycle behavior to map authentic return journeys.
- Detects returning users triggered by non-human signals or click farms.
- Blocks claims from fraudulent sources that manipulate organic traffic patterns.
By filtering out inorganic re-engagement, our ad fraud detection solution ensures your retargeting spend is both efficient and effective.
Conclusion: Adopt A Holistic Mobile Ad Fraud Detection & Prevention Strategy
If your campaign performance looks inconsistent or too good to be true, it may be time to examine what’s really happening behind those numbers.
Uncover hidden threats and validate the health of your mobile app funnel, with insights backed by behavioral analytics and machine learning.
Want to see how secure your funnel really is? Get in touch for an ad traffic audit today.
