Pixalate Releases List of Mobile Apps With the Highest IVT in August 2023 Across Google Android and Apple iOS App Stores

LONDON, October 31, 2023 -- Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the August 2023 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 order to provide insights for this Mobile App IVT series - including specific reports for Apple and Google-hosted apps - Pixalate analyzed over five million apps downloadable from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and over 33 billion global open programmatic advertising transactions in August 2023.

The 5 most common types of IVT types Pixalate observed across all mobile apps in the time period studied were:

• Display Impression Fraud (Sophisticated Outlier Activity*): Impressions that are 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*): The IP of a user does not match the IP and the associated ISP reported in the advertising transaction.
• Proxy (Invalid Proxy Traffic*): The impression is from an intermediary proxy device that exists to manipulate traffic counts, pass 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 that has been 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 (e.g., blocking an app highly impacted by spoofing could lead to blocking apps that have real traffic that is attractive to buyers). See our Mobile App Spoofing series for a list of apps most impacted by the spoofing IVT type specifically.

Learn more about Pixalate’s reported IVT types in our Knowledge Base.

Top Mobile Apps Impacted by IVT - August 2023

Download the full list of top 20 mobile apps impacted by IVT in August 2023:

• Google Play Store
• Apple App Store
  
  

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. 

Disclaimer

The content of this press release, and the Apps With the Highest IVT Reports (the "Report"), reflect Pixalate's opinions with respect to 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. 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 in the time period studied.