LONDON, UK – May 11, 2026 – Pixalate, an ad fraud and privacy compliance platform, today released its Q1 2026 Global Made for Advertising (MFA) Mobile Apps Benchmarks Report.

This report details open programmatic advertising activity and trends for mobile apps identified by Pixalate as likely MFA across the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Q3 2025 (September).

This report details open programmatic advertising activity and trends for mobile apps identified by Pixalate as likely MFA across the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Q1 2026 (March).

Key Findings

• MFA App Count: 1,976 mobile apps were flagged by Pixalate as likely MFA in Q1 2026 (1,630) on Google Play Store; 346 on Apple App Store)
• Anonymous Registration: 1,643 flagged MFA mobile apps had an “anonymous” country of registration (1,356 on Google Play Store; 287 on the Apple App Store), followed by the United States and China
• Top Category: “Games” had the highest volume of MFA-flagged apps, totaling 1,175 apps (955 on Google Play Store; 220 on the Apple App Store)

Methodology

Pixalate’s data science team analyzed 19 billion global open programmatic advertising impressions and 232,000 mobile apps across the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Q1 2026 (March). The analysis highlights the presence of MFA mobile apps based on specific outlier characteristics, including ad refresh rate, popularity score, and user reviews.

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About Pixalate

Pixalate is a global platform for privacy compliance, ad fraud prevention, and data intelligence in the digital ad supply chain. Founded in 2012, Pixalate’s platform is trusted by regulators, data researchers, advertisers, publishers, ad tech platforms, and financial analysts across the Connected TV (CTV), mobile app, and website ecosystems. Pixalate is MRC-accredited for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT). www.pixalate.com 

Disclaimer

The content of this press release, and the Q1 2026 Global Made For Advertising Benchmarks Report for Mobile Apps  (the "Report"), reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Any data shared is grounded in Pixalate’s proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources should not be construed as endorsements. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees. Pixalate is sharing this data not to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but, instead, to report findings and trends pertaining to programmatic advertising activity across in the time period studied. Per the Media Rating Council (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.” Where the traffic characteristics are suggestive of deliberate intent to mislead, such IVT is often referred to as “ad fraud.” Also 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.”