iOS 16 seems to be reducing ad fraud, so that’s good, right?
One-in-three iPhones are now running iOS 16, says Mixpanel – and the many security improvements in the new OS seem to be delivering a massive reduction in ad fraud.
The ads industry needed a break
Apple released iOS 16 just a few weeks ago on 12 September. Since then, a company called Pixalate has identified a significant reduction in ad fraud rates. It says such fraud is 16.6 percent lower on iOS 16 than it is on older versions of the operating system.
“Ad fraud rates on devices updated to iOS 16 were 16.6% lower compared to older versions of iOS (14.8% vs. 17.8%),” the company said.
“According to our data, generally speaking, older OS versions also have a higher relative share of invalid traffic (IVT). For example, iOS 14 devices seem to generate 6.5% of the total IVT seen on iOS, even though they make up 5.5% of all iOS traffic.”
This is good because it suggests both that advertisers can be more confident that their ad budgets are being properly spent, but also because it means consumers are less likely to be successfully struck by ad spam and other nasties.
[Also read: Apple Music to sponsor Super Bowl half time show for 5 years]
What is IVT and what causes it?
IVT is defined as an artificial rise in ad clicks and impressions on a website.
It’s mostly generated by automated software, bots, and not by real users. It is usually generated by bots and crawlers that use a variety of tricks to make people click on ads, or to simulate clicking themselves. Around 27% of web traffic is generated by bots, according to Cheq, and $42 billion in ad revenue is lost to IVT each year, 32% of this is lost through mobile fraud.
It is however pretty interesting that while Apple gets a lot of criticism for its move to secure the privacy of internet users while building its own ads business, it gets little praise for protecting the cash advertisers are losing to click fraud. Perhaps the money saved can simply be spent on better ads?
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