Mobile advertising is big business. But as with all money-making schemes, the more cash is available, the more fraudulent activity arises.

Every mobile ad network has its own way of dealing with the issue.

Indeed, BuzzCity recently revealed that it's working with National University of Singapore's School of Computing to research 'fraudulent clicks'.

"While it may never be possible to reveal the intent behind a click - whether it is a competitor who has a vested interest in draining its rival's ad spend, or a publisher who wants to earn more money - research like this will help create mathematical models to better identify quality traffic for advertisers," commented Professor Wong Lim Soon about the initiative. 

Where's my money?

It's a situation that's also been highlighted by a forum post from developer The Binary Family.

Claiming that advertising and monetisation platform Tapjoy had been "hacked", The Binary Family's Thorsten Rauser said he could be owed $15,000.

"After we recently received our detailed account info (CPI), only for September to December, we had to conclude that at least 70% of our installs were clearly the result of hacking (and over 90% in December)," he wrote on TouchArcade.

"For example, the majority of the installs we paid for came from countries where we do not actually sold apps (e.g. Algeria, China and Hong Kong)."

It's your fault

In response, Tapjoy's head of global communications Stephanie Holbrook told PocketGamer.biz, the company hadn't been hacked and took the security of its platform very seriously.

"After a thorough investigation of The Binary Family's situation, we have determined that their application was made available outside of the iTunes App Store in November," she pointed out.

"The Binary Family was using a very outdated version of our software library, which didn't have the latest enhancements to detect third party downloads."

The conclusion is that the two companies are working together to resolve these concerns, while highlighting a wider issue across the industry that seems likely to become more prevalent, especially as user acquisition costs continue to rise.

[source: TouchArcade]