A handful of apps caused the vast majority of fraudulent display impressions in mobile. These apps were loaded by fake mobile devices and used solely to load ad impressions.

1. May 2017 / Page 0marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Mobile Display Fraud Case Study
Marketing Science analyzed 1 billion ad impressions data from nearly 1,000 mobile
apps. Highly suspicious apps were identified because they caused a
disproportionally large portion of the ad impressions. These apps were then cross
referenced with SDK data from Aki Kinetic that corroborated the impressions were
loaded using fake mobile devices (mobile simulators created in data centers).
Specifically, fake mobile devices installed and ran fraudulent apps designed solely to
load hundreds of millions of ad impressions.
KEY FINDINGS (labeled in the chart below)
1. 9% of the apps (blue dots) caused 52% of total impressions, 66% of
which were fraudulent (fake devices)
2. The remaining 91% of apps (blue dots) caused the remaining 48% of
the total impressions, 18% of which were fraudulent
3. Overall average – 43% of impressions were fraudulent
1 (52% of imps)
2 (48% of imps)
66% avg fraud
18% avg fraud
RELATED: “Google boots 40 apps, downloaded 36 million times, used for
generating fake impressions and clicks.” Forbes, May 2017