Mobile apps are big business and the same is apparent through the significant advertising budgets dedicated to increasing app installs. In 2022 alone, advertisers spent more than $18 billion on advertising their apps to drive more installs. This obviously makes the app install advertising business lucrative.
Unfortunately, this lure also attracts bad actors and frauds. That’s perhaps why, today, app install fraud is one of the most common forms of ad fraud in the online realm. According to our analysis, we have found that on IOS, the average fraud at installs level is 57% which rapidly increases to 70% on Android devices.
Fraudsters use fake app installs to steal from advertising budgets. The financial impact of this, while significant, is only a small part of all the trouble caused for the advertisers as a result of these activities. What’s more troublesome is that fraudsters are evolving their methods and employing sophisticated methods to carry out their fraudulent activities.
In times like these, it is important for advertisers to start ahead of the curve in order to protect their ad budgets. In order to do this, one must first understand how app install fraud works and that’s exactly what the next section describes. Read on.
The Hidden Tactics Behind Install Fraud
While it may seem like app install fraud is a single threat, the reality is much more complex. Fraudsters utilise a number of simple and complex methods to fake installs and steal from advertisers’ budgets. Here’s a quick overview of the most common methods employed by app install fraudsters:
- Click Injection: This is one of the most sophisticated forms of app install fraud. To execute this, fraudsters publish an app that “listens” for app download broadcasts. Using this information, they are able to “inject” a click right before an app install is completed. This allows fraudsters to claim the credit for the app install despite not contributing anything to making it happen.
- Click Spamming: Click spamming is usually employed to target campaigns where advertisers are paying for clicks on their ads. As the name suggests, fraudsters generate a large number of fake clicks, usually using bots, and claim the rewards. However, the advertiser unfortunately ends up paying for clicks that will not result in any genuine interest or installs of their application.
- Organic Hijacking: Another sophisticated form of app install fraud; organic hijacking works by stealing the credit of organic installs. Fraudsters employ malware or other methods to send a fake click right before an app download is completed, claiming the credit for the app install, along with the associated reward.
- Incent traffic: This type of app install fraud is one of the most difficult to detect, as it uses real users to scam advertisers. In this type of fraud, fraudsters place ads on incent walls and incentivise real users to download an application and in some cases, complete an action that claims the reward. In many cases, fraudsters straight out share a part of their affiliate payout with the user. While there are real users involved and the app download is also authentic, since the user is only interested in the reward, the entire activity doesn’t drive any value for the advertiser.
- SDK Spoofing: With SDK Spoofing, fraudsters usually use a malware-laced app of their own to infect user devices. This app then manipulates the SDK communication of the advertisers’ apps to generate fake installs and register other actions that may be rewarded by the advertiser. Alarmingly, such an activity is extremely difficult to track and can be conducted indefinitely, effectively draining entire ad budgets without delivering any real value.
But Aren’t Fraud Checks by MMPs Enough?
Impression campaigns are often the first leg of a successful, larger ad campaign that may target app installs. As a first step, getting authentic impressions is important in order to make informed decisions to drive more app installs. To make sure their impression campaign data is authentic, many advertisers depend on Mobile Measurement Platforms or MMPs.
Unfortunately, MMPs are not as capable or dependable as many advertisers have been led to believe. One of the biggest problems with MMPs is that they are paid for impression attribution and not validation. To that end, if they start reporting all the fraudulent impressions, it may affect their revenue associated with attribution.
Moreover, in cases where MMPs are able to detect and report impression fraud, the standard timeline is simply too slow to make any real impact. Most MMPs follow a D+7 reporting schedule, creating a significant delay between the moment a fraudulent activity is detected and the time when an advertiser finds out about it. Finally, most MMPs employ basic checks to detect fraud which are largely ineffective against sophisticated ad fraud techniques.
The Cost of Fake Installs: Why It’s More Than Just Wasted Budget
No doubt, the wasted ad budgets is perhaps the most obviously painful effect of ad fraud experienced by advertisers. However, the real impact of ad fraud goes much deeper than draining your budget and can have long-term impact on the business.
Fraudulent activities, when undetected, can also skew the ad performance data that advertisers depend on to make optimization decisions. These distorted key performance indicators (KPIs) can further lead to advertisers making optimization decisions that waste even more of their marketing budget.
Not to forget, skewed metrics also impact other decisions related to user acquisition and experience. The wrong decisions, especially in the case of user experience, can lead businesses to decisions that worsen the experience of installing and using their apps, negatively impacting long term user retention and organic App Store/Play Store rankings.
In other words, a wasted ad budget is just the tip of the iceberg. App install fraud can impact user data analytics which can in turn, impact long term marketing ROI.
Red Flags Valid8 has Detected
Fighting fraud starts with detecting fraud. Advertisers must stay vigilant and look for the following signs to catch instances of fraud and deal with the fraudsters before they can cause significant harm:
- Abnormally Low Conversion Rate– An abnormal pattern in conversion rates despite getting high volume of installs could indicate bot-driven installs or fraudulent traffic sources that do not engage with the app. Identifying such patterns helps optimize ad spend and improve genuine user acquisition.
Unusual Pattern in Install to First App Open– A long delay or an instantly high number of app opens after installation may signal automated scripts or incentivized traffic rather than organic user interest. Monitoring this metric ensures campaign integrity. 
- Traffic from Incorrect Device Make and Model– If installs originate from devices that differ from the targeted specifications, it could be a sign of spoofed traffic or misattributed users. Such anomalies impact data accuracy and decision-making.
High Installs but No Events from a Single Device– Multiple installs from a single device without any meaningful in-app activity suggest fraudulent behavior, such as install farms or bot-driven traffic. Addressing this prevents wasted ad budgets. 
While these ways are a good starting point for detecting instances of fraud, these are far from being foolproof. Manual monitoring can only go so far when you are up against an army of fraudsters using sophisticated technologies to steal your advertising dollars. So, what else can a well-meaning advertiser do to protect their campaigns and interests against fraud? Let’s find out in the next section.
What Marketers Can Do: The Ideal Solution to Validate Installs
There’s more to preventing fraud than simply looking out for patterns in user behaviour and ad performance metrics. To truly make sure your ad campaigns are protected against all forms of fraud, employ the following methods:
- Adopt Advanced Fraud Detection Tools
Unlike traditional ad fraud detection tools, Valid8 by mFilterIt has an advanced approach to detect even the most sophisticated forms of app install fraud. Such tools work round-the-clock and provide advertisers with real-time fraud detection, a necessity in today’s times of rampant ad fraud. Some of the salient advantages of a good app fraud detection tool include:
- Machine learning-powered fraud detection
- Device fingerprinting & behavioural analysis
- Post-install event validation
- Conduct Click-Level Validation to Reduce Fraudulent Installs
Click-level validation is a popular ad fraud detection technique, and it works unsurprisingly well. Simply put, with click-level validation, advertisers ask publishers to match click data with impression data. By doing this, publishers can prove that each click was a result of a real person viewing the ad and making the decision to click and download the app. While it may seem a troublesome extra step to some, authentic publishers will be happy to comply in the interest of maintaining transparency.
- Verify Partners & Networks
To add a final layer of security against fraudsters, advertisers must carefully verify any and all partners and ad networks they associate with. This verification can eliminate the most obvious threats in the very beginning, long before they can cause any trouble and drain your ad budget or skew your performance metrics.
Conclusion:
Taking a Proactive Approach to Protect Ad Spend
App install fraud is a big problem and not just because it drains advertisers’ ad budgets. The fact that it is so rampant and can result in skewed metrics makes app install fraud a bigger problem than it appears to be on the surface. Advertisers must be vigilant and proactive in protecting their campaigns from instances of fraud. To that end, advertisers must stay up to date with the latest techniques employed by fraudsters and employ technologically advanced fraud protection solutions to safeguard their ad campaigns and advertising budgets.
