Google has taken steps to suspend apps from their Google Play store due to a report from Forensiq that found that they were intentionally committing ad fraud. While the full list of apps suspended is not currently available, it is believed to be a fairly significant number. The report from Forensiq said that thousands of apps were carrying out this fraud, resulting in an estimated $1 Billion per year in fraudulent ad expenses.
The apps would be installed on mobile devices and then run in the background serving up thousands of advertisements. These ads would never actually be displayed to users, and generate no benefit at all to the brands purchasing the ads. In some cases it also burned through significant amounts of data on the mobile user’s plans.
The apps could establish up to 1100 connections per minute to 320 different ad networks. They would mimic actual user behavior as well, which would make it significantly more difficult to identify the fraudulent activity and remove it on the ad network’s side.
The report calculated that up to 1% of all mobile devices in the US were running an app that was suspected of fraud, and outside of the US that number went up to 3%. With more than 5000 separate mobile apps being identified on both Apple and Android devices, it is not yet clear how Google decided which apps to pull and which ones would remain.
Mike Zaneis, who is the executive vice president and general counsel at the Interactive Advertising Bureau said this of the report by Forensiq, “It explores the impact in the mobile space when before the focus was on display advertising. This is the next frontier for criminals. As the money and ad dollars flow toward the mobile space, criminals are going to go there. They are following the money.”
