Click spamming

Mobile attribution typically credits the last click within a lookback window, often days long. Click spamming games that window. A fraudulent source reports clicks for vast numbers of devices, for example via an SDK that fires clicks in the background or by passing device IDs to tracking links. When any of those users happen to install the app on their own, the spammer's earlier "click" wins the credit.

The result is that organic users, who would have come anyway, are paid for as if a network had delivered them. It is a form of attribution fraud and SIVT and it poisons data: marketers think a channel is working when it is only claiming what already happened.

Tell-tale signals: extremely low click-to-install conversion rates (thousands of clicks per install), click-to-install times spread flat across the whole lookback window rather than clustered soon after the click, and a drop in "organic" installs when the source is turned on. Shorter lookback windows and click validation by MMPs reduce the damage. Compare click injection, which fires one precisely timed click instead of millions of random ones.

Think of it like this

It is like writing your name on every lottery ticket in the shop so you can claim any winning ticket, even though you never bought one.

An example

A network sends 4 million clicks for a shopping app in Mexico in a week and gets credited with 2,000 installs, a 0.05% click-to-install rate. When the network is paused, organic installs rise by almost exactly the same amount.