Anti-Fraud Solutions for Mobile Traffic: Experts Talk
As mobile traffic grows, mobile ad fraud is becoming a more significant issue in the advertising industry. This means that today, both mobile and desktop platforms are affected by ad fraud.
The good news is that according to the recent Statista research, the proper and timely security measures can help reduce fraud rates to under 1% for desktop ads and to nearly zero (!) for mobile ads.
Does this mean that mobile ad fraud is easier to combat? Do the fraud-combating techniques significantly differ if we compare mobile and desktop traffic?
Today, we spoke to AdTech specialists in the niche of advertising security to find the answers.
What is the Difference Between Desktop and Mobile Fraud?
Both mobile and desktop ad fraud involve imitating human behavior to make ad networks take fake impressions, clicks, and other actions for real user engagement. The main difference is in the behavioral patterns, which slightly differ depending on what people use: a PC, a mobile device, an app, or a site.
Thus, mobile traffic usually involves many frequent short sessions and multiple actions like scrolling, touching the screen, etc. Meanwhile, desktop users often spend longer time on websites, and their actions include some more complex interactions like page navigation, filling out forms, etc.
| Desktop fraud | Mobile fraud |
| Imitates longer sessions | Imitates short and frequent sessions |
| Imitates complex actions: navigation, filling out forms, writing texts, adding items to a cart | Imitates simpler actions: scrolling, screen touching, double-tapping for likes, zooming in and out |
| Uses malware/browser extensions | Uses malicious APKs |
As a result, fraudsters adapt their methods to mimic these patterns. According to Svetlana, Business Security and Traffic Expert,
“A large part of mobile fraud consists of click spam when fraudsters create fake clicks on mobile ads to artificially increase the number of ad interactions. This is usually done with the help of malicious apps that can launch ad clicks in the background or while the user is active in the app. Alternatively, these ad clickers can stay active when the app is allowed to work in the background or record impressions as clicks. There are also large app install farms that use a huge number of devices and some automated to download and install apps and fake app store statistics.’
Besides, here are some more significant points on the desktop and mobile fraud methods and the differences between them:
- 1. Adware work similarly on both desktop and mobile traffic
This method implies timer-based software that triggers a redirect to an ad or an affiliate link – without any user consent, of course. For desktop traffic, fraudsters use traditional downloadable software we usually call malware or opt for malicious browser extensions and scripts.
The pattern of this fraud type remains the same for mobile traffic, but it’s performed using malicious APKs that users download to their Android devices.
- 2. Desktop fraud usually involves more complicated and resource-intensive attacks
Desktop traffic-oriented fraudsters often work through special bots launched on infected PCs and create fake interactions with the ads. Such bots can usually perform a more massive attack than a malicious mobile app.
- 3. Mobile fraud can use more sophisticated methods that are harder to detect and combat
For example, traffic that appears to come from mobile devices in the advertising statistics can appear to be emulated by several desktop machines. This way, fraudsters imitate ad impressions on mobile devices while, in fact, no single smartphone or tablet was involved.
Another example is called click injection. It works through a special fraud app that connects to the ‘Install broadcast’ – a signal on an Android device that indicates a new app installation in progress.
Here is how it works:
- When a user installs a new app, Android sends out an install broadcast to all apps on the device.
- A fraudulent app, already present on the device, listens for this broadcast.
- Just before the installation is complete, the fraudulent app triggers a fake click.
- The fraudster’s app gets paid for the installation, stealing revenue from a legitimate advertiser.
How Do Specialists Combat Mobile Ad Fraud in 2024?
As Svetlana Sokolova puts it,
‘To effectively combat mobile, as well as desktop fraud, it is necessary to use specialized anti-fraud solutions that adapt to the unique features of a particular platform. The overall approach remains the same for all traffic types: it includes user behavior analysis, modern machine learning technologies, and constant combating methods updates.’
Here are the modern guidelines widely accepted by the AdTech security specialists:
- 1. Multi-level traffic verification. This means using various methods of analysis and data filtering to detect and block suspicious traffic at the earliest stages.
- 2. User behavior analysis: Traffic specialists analyze user behavior to identify abnormalities and deviations from standard, traditional behavior. This helps detect bots and other fraud methods based on suspicious activities.
- 3. Regular algorithm updates. Unfortunately, fraud methods forge ahead rapidly – just like all the other AdTech and MarTech technologies. This is why updating and improving anti-fraud algorithms so that they can effectively combat the most novel fraud types is also an important part of security measures and frameworks.
Summary
While the rise of mobile traffic has increased mobile ad fraud, the current situation can not be called extremely disturbing.
Although new fraud patterns will definitely keep appearing and might become even more sophisticated than before — thanks to the AI boom, among other reasons — modern AdTech security tools have a much bigger potential. With a so-called ‘dynamic approach,’ mobile fraud can be efficiently reduced in most cases and reach near-zero rates.
