What Is Mobile Ad Fraud?

Mobile ad fraud is what happens when someone pretends to be your “perfect traffic source” but is really just burning your budget with fake activity. On paper, you see impressions, clicks, installs, even in-app events. In real life, there are no humans behind them.

In simple terms, mobile ad fraud is any intentional trick that fakes ad performance on phones or tablets so a publisher or network can get paid. Fraudsters use bots, emulators, device farms, SDK spoofing, or hijacked traffic to generate:

• Fake impressions
• Fake clicks
• Fake installs
• Fake post-install events (like “purchase” or “level completed”)

You think you’re buying users. You’re actually buying noise.

Example of mobile ad fraud

Let’s say you run a user acquisition campaign on a $4 CPI deal.

You brief the network, launch the campaign, and a new publisher starts “performing” like crazy. Within days, your dashboard shows:

• 5,000 installs
• Normal Click-Through Rate
• CPI right on target

Looks decent. No alarms.

Then you check the downstream data:

• Almost no one finishes onboarding
• Zero meaningful in-app events: no signups, no subscriptions, no add-to-carts
• Retention for that source falls off a cliff after Day 0

When your data team digs in, they see repeated device IDs, weird IP patterns, and install timestamps that look copy-pasted. The “users” were generated by scripts and emulated devices.

You just wired $20,000 to a fraudster. Your numbers say “success”; your cohorts say “no one’s actually here.”

That gap between top-of-funnel “performance” and real user behavior? That’s mobile ad fraud.

FAQs

How does mobile ad fraud actually work?

Fraudsters mimic real users. They use bots, emulators, device farms, or SDK spoofing to fake impressions, clicks, installs, or in-app events. Your numbers go up, your costs go up… but real users and real revenue don’t.

How can I tell if my campaigns are affected by mobile ad fraud?

Look for sources with “great” top-of-funnel metrics and terrible everything-else:

• high installs, near-zero retention,
• no onboarding completion,
• no purchases or key events,
• weird spikes at night, repeated IPs or device IDs.
  If a source looks amazing in the UA dashboard and dead in your product analytics, be suspicious.

What are the main types of mobile ad fraud?

Common ones:

• Click spam / click injection – stealing credit for organic installs.
• Fake installs / bots / emulators – non-human traffic.
• SDK spoofing – faking install and event pings to the MMP.
• Fake impressions – spoofed ad views that no one saw.

Who’s responsible for fighting mobile ad fraud?

It’s shared. Networks should have fraud protection; your MMP (attribution provider) should have detection and blocking; your own team should monitor cohort quality, not just CPI. You need all three to keep budgets safe.