“SMBS WITH LIMITED BUDGET REMAIN HIGHLY VULNERABLE”

The most common ad fraud is fake installs where publishers cheat the advertisers through employing individuals or bots to drive fake installs to earn a profit.

- Soma Tah

Soma Tah (ST): There is a clear lack of regulations and transparency in the mobile advertising sector. is this the reason for a steep rise in ad fraud cases in India?

Amit Relan (AR): In today’s digital world, trust, verifiability, and transparency barely exist. IT laws are generally confusing and have a few gaps as well. The fraudsters are simply taking advantage of this situation. For instance, a majority of apps on the Play Store today are free for users. The developers of these third-party free apps leverage in-app ads to collect revenues from ad networks. App developers get revenue from advertisers based either on the number of ads displayed or the number of ads clicked by users. While mobile advertising has served the purpose of ensuring that developer interests are met properly, it has also become a platform for various types of fraud. The most common ad fraud is fake installs where publishers cheat the advertisers through employing individuals or bots to drive fake installs to earn a profit. The other ad frauds include fake devices, fake attribution, Bots, click spam, incorrect region among others.

Ad fraud gets even more confusing as it involves several complicating factors. Fraudsters use different techniques to block businesses from discovering who they are. Even the methods that can track them can only yield an IP address or location which is useless to make a criminal case.