AppsFlyer has measured the changing face of fraud in mobile apps.
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Appsflyer: Mobile app fraud hit $800 million in Q1, up 30%

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Mobile tracking and marketing firm AppsFlyer said in a new study that mobile app marketers were exposed to $700 million to $800 million in ad fraud in the first quarter of 2018, up 30 percent compared to the quarterly average for 2017.

Shopping, gaming, finance, and travel apps are the hardest hit. The share of fraudulent app installs has grown by 15 percent, tainting 11.5 percent of all marketing-driven installs. Today, AppsFlyer launched a new annual initiative it calls #FoolsNoMore. The initiative includes a series of educational resources for marketers (including this report) that the company hopes will increase fraud awareness.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.