India leads mobile ad fraud across Asia: MMA’s Report on Ad Fraud

Mobile Marketing Association, a a global non-profit organization, today released an ‘Ad Fraud Benchmark Report’ on the state of mobile ad fraud in India. The report revealed some facts about the level of fraud, and its awareness in the country and aims to help marketers benchmark their exposure to various kinds of fraud.

The report has been published in collaboration with research firm Decision Lab, with the objective of understanding the current industry practices around ad fraud and the methods adopted by marketers. It also highlights the rising and prevalent issues such as adware traffic, ad stacking, domain spoofing, that will help marketers understand organizational challenges and combination of various measures to tackle the problems effectively.

Speaking on the launch, Moneka Khurana, Country Head, MMA India said, “In India, the awareness on ad fraud risks is very low with almost a fifth of the marketers being unclear of their ad fraud budget and majority of them believing that fraudulent activities will only increase. Brand safety on mobile is the biggest concern today and this benchmark report clearly demonstrates that this needs immediate addressal. Marketers will need to be extra cautious to attacks such as ad injections, data fraud, cookie stuffing, etc. Marketers must understand the potential of technologies such as Blockchain that can help solve issues related to fraud and create security and transparency in mobile marketing ecosystem.”

Key highlights from the report are:

• With a rate of 62 per cent, mobile ad fraud remains as one of the biggest challenges in India

• Indian marketers spend nearly 20 per cent of their advertising budget on ad fraud

• 9/10 marketers feel there is scope for improvement in ad fraud prevention methods

• 95 per cent respondents feel that lack of penalties and transparency in industry regulations give rise to ad fraud

• 95 per cent respondents agreed that lack of data sharing and large number of middlemen are also a cause to ad fraud risks

• Major types of ad fraud are cookie stuffing (74 per cent), adware traffic (65 per cent), data fraud (61 per cent), ad injection (54 per cent).

• Only 37 per cent of respondents are aware of Blockchain and its application to prevent fraud.

Read the full report below

MMA Ad Fraud Benchmark Report India.pdf