Display Fraud
Display fraud is a type of fraud where criminals defraud advertisers and networks running CPM (cost per mille) and video view campaigns.
What is mobile display fraud?
To understand display fraud, you first have to understand the concept of display advertising. One of the earliest ways for companies to reach or reengage customers online, display ads were placed on sites for which advertisers paid a set price based on a pre-determined number of impressions. This number was usually set to 1,000, which is where the term cost per mille came into play.
Taking an example, if a website charges a $1.00 CPM and a certain ad got 6,000 impressions, the advertiser would pay $6.00. Because more impressions equals more money, fraudsters found ways to generate false impressions (known as impression fraud) to increase the price for advertisers. Other common methods of display fraud include pop-unders and ad stacking.
In the realm of mobile fraudulent impressions are often sent by apps that appear to be otherwise legitimate, bots, and unsavory publishers.
How to detect and prevent mobile display fraud:
You can often spot this type of ad fraud by looking for a combination of high numbers of impressions, low click rates, and substandard install and retention rates for certain media sources, campaigns, SiteIDs, or even geographies.
However, this is no small feat to do on your own. We recommend looking into a fraud solution or a platform that had a fraud solution as a part of its offering.
These types of solutions will help block fraudulent impressions from IP addresses known to send fraud. Some solutions may even allow you to set up automated alerts to look for SiteIDs or networks with particularly low impression-to-click conversion rates.