Moloco strives to deliver high quality traffic to our advertisers at all times. Moloco uses a combination of data, automation, and human review to protect our advertisers against invalid activity. If and when suspicious activity is detected, Moloco has formal evaluation procedures in place to investigate each incident and offer remediation as needed. To report an incident of fraud, reach out to your Moloco representative for assistance.
Fraud prevention measures
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- Our system continuously monitors and looks for patterns that could signal invalid traffic. Our system considers traffic quality measures based on install, post-install, and (where available) MMP traffic quality tags. Publishers that display abnormal behavior are filtered out globally to prevent future ad servings on these sources.
- We prevent bidding from unpublished apps to reduce the risk of blocking legitimate traffic sources. Although they aren't always malicious, unpublished apps can't be downloaded from an official app store and can lead to poor user experience and inefficient media spend.
- We predict intentional geo-bleed using a proprietary dynamic IP profile database where IP addresses are collected and managed on an ongoing basis to prevent bidding on requests where there is a mismatch in IP to country mapping.
- We reject requests from VPN connections by applying two IP filters in bid processing.
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We capture ground-truth timestamp data using server-to-server click data to get rid of timestamp discrepancies between attribution stakeholders and click link theft used for publisher click spamming. Moloco prevents data interception and manipulation from fraudulent party to uphold attribution accuracy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Moloco work with Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) to prevent ad fraud?
MMP fraud definitions and detection rules vary (see examples under MMP solutions and detection methods). While Moloco works closely with MMPs on pre-defined rules, advertisers can also define and apply custom fraud detection rule logic. If you currently use - or would like to use - custom detection rules, please inform your Moloco representative ahead of campaign launch.
| Fraud type | Description | Common signs | MMP solutions and detection methods |
| Bot traffic | Fake users (i.e., bots) simulated via script or other means. |
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AppsFlyer P360: |
| Install verification | Bad install receipt (iOS only) or install signature (both iOS and Android) indicating the install was generated outside of the App Store. |
AppsFlyer P360: |
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| Click flooding (i.e., fraudulent clicks) | Large numbers of clicks are sent in regular intervals |
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AppsFlyer P360: Adjust:
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| Click injection | Fraudulent clicks sent when an install occurs, leading to rejection | Short Click-to-Install Time (CTIT) |
AppsFlyer P360: Adjust: |
Is suspicious traffic blocked in real time? How are MMPs doing this?
Moloco’s fraud prevention systems are continuously updated to deliver high-quality traffic to advertisers. If you are using an MMP fraud detection tool (e.g., AppsFlyer’s P360, Adjust’s Fraud Prevention Suite, etc.), Moloco receives rejected installs in real time with the corresponding rejection reason. If the MMP solution also supports post-attribution blocking, Moloco can receive rejected installs up to 7 days later. Please refer to individual MMP solution guides for more information.