Fintech’s silent drain: How ad fraud wastes budgets and baits wallets

$88 billion. That’s how much digital advertising fraud cost marketers globally in 2023, with losses expected to reach $172 billion by 2028. AppsFlyer reports that 15% of global mobile media spend is wasted on fraud – lost to click fraud, bot-driven installs, and invalid traffic before ads even reach real users. Fraud is a silent budget killer. Without effective bot traffic detection and fake traffic prevention, fintech marketers risk optimizing campaigns based on fake data—leading to inflated CPAs, wasted spend, and poor decision-making. Ad networks often exacerbate the problem by aggregating traffic from multiple sources, many of which are unverified. The result? Fintech startups burn through acquisition budgets without achieving real user growth, while fraudsters thrive on broken attribution models. The traffic trap: How fake installs and clicks distort campaigns Ad fraud doesn’t just waste money – it warps the very metrics marketers depend on. Every fake install or click inflates CP...