Ghost click farms: the invisible threat draining enterprise ad budgets

Hundreds of fake apps and millions of downloads contributing to billions in ad fraud – welcome to the brave new world of ghost click farms.

In September, security researchers uncovered SlopAds, a malicious app operation that turned 38 million Android devices into invisible fraud nodes.

This scheme secretly co-opted user smartphones into a massive distributed network that, at its peak, generated 2.3 billion ad bid requests every day.

Unlike traditional click farms, where rows of smartphones imitate customers, ghost click farms leverage personal devices to invisibly and remotely carry out the fraud, unlocking newfound scale and obfuscating detection.

To make matters worse, AI tools empower ad fraud actors to better automate attacks and ...