Ad fraud remains a pervasive problem in the peripheral of digital advertising. India is the latest inclusion in the abundance of ad fraud. According to research by TUNE, more than 24.3 billion ad clicks on 702 mobile ad networks are scattered around the globe. The report also says that about 15% of all mobile ads across the networks were fraudulent. However, once the report got restricted to India, the click rate was significantly higher at almost 32%. India also had the 10th highest app install fraud rate, with 16.2% of fraud installations.
Mobile Ad Frauds in India
The statistics of advertising revenue exhausted worldwide on fake advertising is still a burning topic. A research estimation by Association for National Advertisers says that there is a global loss of $6.5 Billion in 2017 due to Ad frauds. In India, it is a rising problem with 2.4 times worse than the global figures. India even ranks top for the highest video ad fraud. Since Indian organizations are starting to deploy more budgets for digital transformation, the massive problem of ad fraud is going to worsen for sure.
Kinds of Fraud
There are majorly two categories that dominate the app market. They are device fraud and click fraud respectively. Device fraud includes mobile app installs from simulated devices, different users, fake downloads from unknown sources. Click fraud happens mostly through fake accounts of ad publishers to increase the popularity of any ad/ website/ social media post.
Ad Fraud Prevention
Ad fraud prevention is advisable to implement at the early phase of company’s marketing activity while adopting affiliate marketing budgets. In order to identify any ad fraud, the marketers should research their affiliate data and scrutinize if there are any abnormalities. Normally the organic data is captured by the criminals and convert it into inorganic. The advertisers can track those publishers who offer incentives, even if there is poor traffic.
There are attractive tips for new advertisers to prevent Ad Fraud, though some automated tools are also available to detect it. Major parameters of any user’s device are tracked by this tool and extricate fraudulent users from real ones. These tools integrate with the advertiser’s existing system and collaborate with the publishers to stop this problem. However, Indian advertisers have to go a long way before fraud-free status can be attained. Hence, Ad fraud prevention requires a critical identity in the marketing industry to battle out this apparent inevitability.
