Adex Releases a Report on Ad Fraud Targeting Gambling Campaigns

Adex, the expert in fraud-free advertising released a new report. The report provides an insight into ad frauds, affecting the online gambling industry.

New Report Shares an Insight on Ad Frauds

Expert in fraud-free advertising, Adex released a new report, identifying ad frauds impacting gambling campaigns. Conducted over 5 months, the study analyzed 4 key gambling industry operators, actively testing new traffic sources at the time.

The report aimed at providing an insight on ad fraud within the gambling market, outlines the biggest threats and creates a better understanding of how to mitigate and prevent them. Consequently, the company said that it discovered new approaches to deal with invalid traffic in the gambling industry.

The Study Reveals Four Main Types of Gambling Ad Threats

Adex revealed that there are four main ad fraud patterns. Behavior anomalies include bots that mimic human behavior. The company outlined that approximately 15% of the gambling frauds used various behavior anomalies.

The second type of fraud pattern is attribution and click injection. Adex explained that this type of fraud is used to hijack a user’s device and fake an “ad click,” that looks legitimate. The study found that 18% of the gambling ad frauds used attribution fraud and click injection, but it said that this type of fraud is extremely widespread among affiliate marketers.

Another type of fraud widely used within gambling ad frauds is network anomalies. That type of fraud uses VPN, Proxy or Datacenter traffic, creating suspicious traffic. The study found that network anomalies were used for approximately 22% of the gambling ad frauds.

Adex’s study found that the most common fraud type is browser anomalies. That type of fraud involves the use of falsified geo parameters and fake browsers. The study unveiled that 45% of online gambling fraud is conducted with the help of that method.

Fake Mobile Gambling Traffic Is Higher than Fraudulent Desktop Traffic

Considering the continuously growing popularity of mobile betting, the European Gaming and Betting Association predicted that mobile betting in Europe may be accountable for 58.2% of all online bets by 2025. On that point, Adex said that that increase was undoubtedly noticed by fraudsters.

Indicating that mobile ad fraud has surged by 15% for the first five months of 2021, Adex predicts that further growth of mobile ad traffic volumes is expected. In that line of thought, the study found that 28% of desktop gambling traffic is fraudulent. In contrast, the study revealed that 36% of mobile gambling traffic is fraudulent.

The Gambling Sector Is Second-Most Targeted Sector by Fraudulent Activities

The latest report released by Adex compared the percentage of fraudulent activities within the gambling, finance and gaming sector. As a result, it found that more than 34% of the gambling and betting traffic is invalid. However, the sector that is mostly impacted by fake traffic is the financial one with 38%. In contrast, the eCommerce sector has seen only 24% of fake traffic, followed by the gaming sector with only 21%.

With that in mind, the report did acknowledge that the pandemic has increased fake gambling traffic. Compared to previous years, Adex said that the fake gambling traffic has increased by 15%, but online activities have also spiked.