LONDON, May 24, 2024 – Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the April 2024 Mobile Apps IVT Report for the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The series reveals which mobile apps appear to be most impacted by invalid traffic (IVT), including ad fraud, as measured by Pixalate.
In April 2024, Pixalate analyzed over 385 thousand downloadable apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and over 31.8 billion global open programmatic advertising impressions.
The reports highlight the five most common types of IVT that Pixalate observed across both mobile app platforms during the study period, which are as follows:
- Display Impression Fraud (Sophisticated Outlier Activity*): Involves impressions generated from the same browser or device at a statistically significant inflated rate.
- Video Impression Fraud (Sophisticated Outlier Activity*): Video ad impressions that are generated from the same browser or device at a statistically significant inflated rate.
- Masked IP (Manipulation/Falsification of Location Related Attributes*): Involves video ad impressions generated from the same browser or device at a statistically significant inflated rate.
- Proxy (Invalid Proxy Traffic*): The impression is from an intermediary proxy device that manipulates traffic counts, passes nonhuman or invalid traffic, or fails to comply with the protocol.
- High-Risk Device ID (Known Dangerous or Fraudulent SIVT Sources*): The impression is from a device ID flagged for a high risk of invalid traffic.
*( ) denotes IVT detection method per Media Rating Council (MRC) Invalid Traffic Guidelines.
Pixalate excluded spoofing from this report, as spoofing requires different tactics to prevent it (e.g., blocking an app highly impacted by spoofing could lead to blocking apps with real traffic attractive to buyers). See our Mobile App Spoofing series for a list of apps most affected by the spoofing IVT type.
Learn more about Pixalate’s reported IVT types in our Knowledge Base.
Top Mobile Apps Impacted by IVT – April 2024
Google Play Store Apps With the Highest Rates of IVT – April 2024
1. Cooking Channel GO (28%)
2. Cube Puzzle (24%)
3. British Movies & TV by Fawesome (21%)
4. FXNOW: Watch TV Live & On Demand (19%)
5. NV.TV (17%)
Apple App Store Apps with the Highest Rates of IVT – April 2024
1. Polys Tiles (50%)
2. GlobaMusic Player (49%)
3. 오락 – 만보기 잠금화면 뉴스 앱테크 (48%)
4. LINE：ソリティア (48%)
5. Puzzle Villa－HD Jigsaw Puzzles (48%)
Download the full list of top 20 mobile apps impacted by IVT in April 2024.
