Pixalate Releases December 2022 Mobile App Spoofing Report For Apple, Google App Stores: Comedy Central, Tumblr Among Popular Apps Targeted

Pixalate’s Mobile Ad Fraud Series for December 2022 reveals games and utilities continue to be app categories most targeted by spoofing

LONDON, January 12, 2022 -- Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the December 2022 edition of our Mobile Ad Fraud Series, where we highlight unique forms of invalid traffic (IVT), inclusive of “ad fraud,” across the mobile open programmatic advertising marketplace.

This report covers Mobile App Spoofing numbers for December 2022. For background information, methodology and definitions related to CTV App Spoofing, please visit our inaugural Mobile App Spoofing Report (October 2022) and view the FAQs there.

Key Findings:

• Wordscapes, Happy Color, and Sudoku continue to remain on the iOS app list since October.
• Comedy Central emerges as the top iOS app targeted for spoofing in North America during December.
• Games (especially for iOS) and Utilities (especially for Android) continue to be among app categories most targeted by mobile app spoofing.
• Ragdoll Fighter continues to top the chart for North American Google Play Store apps, holding onto its spot from our November report.

The following are the top 20 mobile apps from the Apple and Google app stores that were most impacted by app spoofing: 

Click below to download the list with more details:

About Pixalate

Pixalate is the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising. We work 24/7 to guard your reputation and grow your media value. Pixalate offers the only system of coordinated solutions across display, app, video, and CTV for better detection and elimination of ad fraud. Pixalate is an MRC-accredited service for the detection and filtration of sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) across desktop and mobile web, mobile in-app, and CTV advertising. www.pixalate.com

Disclaimer

The content of this press release, and the CTV Ad Fraud Series (the “Report”), reflect Pixalate’s opinions with respect to the factors that Pixalate believes can be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate’s opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and neither this press release nor the Report are intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings and apparent trends pertaining to apps in the Roku and Amazon app stores. Per the MRC, “'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes. Also per the MRC, “‘Invalid Traffic’ is defined generally as traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic (spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent traffic.”