If your app ad prevent app install fraud are being ruined by fake install fraud, it’s time to take action. This type of fraudulent activity is completely distorting your data and wasting your ad budgets. Moreover, these skewed inputs can also have long-term effects on your brand’s success.

Fraudsters perpetrate app install fraud in a number of ways. They may use device farms, device emulators, or SDK spoofing to fake app installs and defraud advertisers, publishers, and ad networks of their CPI advertising revenue.

One method of this fraud involves malware that spies on users’ phones and identifies new apps being downloaded to the device. As soon as the new app is launched, the malware scans for tracking links that lead to UA campaigns with CPI models and sends them to the fraudsters’ systems. The fraudsters then receive the CPI payout for the app download.

App Install Fraud Unmasked: Strategies to Identify and Prevent Fraudulent Installs

Other bad actors rely on install farms. This type of fraud uses automated scripts and emulators that mimic the signature of real mobile devices to create a series of app installations and other in-app user interactions that earn brands full commission payments without driving any value or contributing to the customer journey.

Fraudsters are constantly attempting to improve their tactics, making it hard for marketers to detect and prevent this type of fraud. Thankfully, comprehensive fraud dashboards can help marketers quickly identify patterns of suspicious activity. For example, high concentrations of new devices at scale can indicate device ID reset marathons, while a low retention rate often points to fake app installs and churn fraud.