Mobile App

In-app events

Fake installs

Fake install fraud corrupting in-app event campaign data

Fake installs that enter your MMP feed ghost users into your in-app event funnel, collapsing event completion rates and corrupting the CPA data your campaigns optimise on. Tapper removes fake installs before they pollute your in-app event attribution.

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Trusted by leading brands worldwide

Fake installs feed ghost users into your in-app event funnel and destroy your CPA data

In-app event campaigns are uniquely exposed to fake install fraud because every fake install that enters your MMP creates a phantom user in your post-install funnel who will never complete any genuine event. These ghost users become denominator noise in your event completion rate calculations: your tutorial completion rate falls, your purchase conversion rate drops, and your CPA for every downstream event rises, even if your genuine user acquisition is performing well. The fraud at the install level propagates through every metric in your in-app event reporting.

The insidious nature of this problem is that it's often misdiagnosed. When your in-app event rates fall, the natural interpretation is a product quality issue, an onboarding friction problem, or a targeting mismatch. Teams respond by changing their creative, adjusting their audience targeting, or revising their onboarding flow, when the actual problem is that their install base is populated with users who never existed. Tapper identifies and removes fake installs before they enter your MMP, ensuring that your in-app event funnel is built on genuine users whose behaviour accurately reflects your product's performance.

How Tapper stops fake installs on Mobile in-app events

Three steps from connection to clean campaign data, no engineering required.

Connect your MMP and ad networks

Tapper integrates with AppsFlyer, Adjust, Kochava, Singular, and Branch, analysing install events and the click chain leading to them before they populate your in-app event funnel.

Fake installs detected and removed at the install layer

Tapper applies CTIT analysis, SDK signal verification, device cluster detection, and session behaviour review to identify fake installs before they create ghost users in your post-install event funnel.

Clean event funnel and accurate CPA data

With fake installs removed, your in-app event funnel reflects genuine user behaviour. Your event completion rates, CPA calculations, and LTV projections are built on real users only.

Fake installs on Mobile in-app events by the numbers

Data from Tapper's platform analysis and published industry research.

28%

Of mobile installs are fraudulent globally

$10B

Lost to mobile ad fraud in 2023

40%

Of mobile ad fraud uses SDK spoofing techniques

90%

SDK spoofing detection rate by Tapper

Tapper vs MMP Built-in Fraud Protection

See exactly where the gaps are, and why they matter to your in-app events performance.

Capability

Tapper

MMP Built-in Fraud Protection

Fake install detection

Multi-layer analysis including session behaviour

Device signal and CTIT checks only

Event funnel protection

Ghost users removed before entering funnel

Fake installs pollute entire event funnel

CPA data accuracy

Event rates calculated on genuine installs only

CPA data distorted by ghost user denominator

LTV model protection

LTV projections exclude fraudulent users

LTV models include ghost user noise

Success stories

Trusted by industry leaders

See how companies are protecting their ad budgets and improving ROI with Tapper.

“Tapper played a key role in improving the efficiency of Du's performance marketing activity by addressing traffic quality issues within campaigns. Following implementation, Du achieved a 13% reduction in CPA and an 8.6% increase in order rate, demonstrating a clear improvement in conversion quality and overall campaign effectiveness.”

Joseph Elbcherrawy

Client Leadership Director, Mindshare, a WPP Media Brand

“During our Tapper trial for INFINITI, we uncovered low-quality traffic that wasn't visible inside the platforms. Removing it delivered a 14% uplift in conversions and an 11.4% reduction in CPA - a meaningful efficiency gain for INFINITI's 2026 growth plans.”

David Barnes

Data & Technology Lead, Omnicom Group

“With Tapper's protection we were able to identify and block invalid clicks in real time. The impact was immediate as our cost per acquisition dropped by 30% and ROAS improved significantly. More importantly, Tapper gives us the confidence that our campaigns are reaching genuine customers, which makes it truly invaluable.”

Dimitris Bakas

Senior Performance Marketing, Public Group

“We started using Tapper to get better visibility on where our clicks were coming from, and ended up cutting wasted spend by over 12%. The performance uplift was clear, and for the first time, we could trust the numbers we were seeing. It's a total game-changer for campaign integrity.”

Stuart Parkin

Director of Operations, Regit

“Tapper's blocking technology purifies our paid media traffic which roughly equates to a 36x return against its subscription costs. It's certainly one of the easiest-to-implement tools in our entire marketing stack.”

Reno Mindemann

Head of Growth, Kama Capital

“We've been using Tapper for over a year now, and it has become a core part of how we run paid media. Invalid traffic was always something we knew existed but couldn't really act on. Tapper changed that. We're now saving up to $50K per year, and on PureSquare specifically, we saw around a 20% decrease in CPA. Based on these results, we decided to roll it out across other ventures under Disrupt as well.”

Nurkan Kirkan

GTM Consultant / Paid Growth, Disrupt.com

Trusted by leading brands worldwide

Frequently asked questions

Everything about fake installs on Mobile App in-app events.

Network algorithms optimising in-app event campaigns use post-install event data to find more users likely to complete target actions. When fake installs populate your MMP with ghost users who never engage, the event completion rate signals sent back to the network algorithm are artificially depressed. The algorithm interprets this as targeting the wrong audience and adjusts, reducing delivery to the very users most likely to genuinely engage with your app.

Both are important, but fake install detection has upstream priority because fake installs corrupt every downstream metric. A ghost user from a fake install cannot complete any genuine event, so their presence in your install cohort degrades all event funnel metrics. Removing fake installs at the install layer protects your entire in-app analytics stack. Tapper applies both install-level and event-level analysis simultaneously.

Yes. Tapper provides per-source fake install rate analysis alongside per-source event completion rate data, so you can identify which networks are delivering installs that never convert to any in-app event. Sources with high install volume but near-zero event completion are the strongest indicators of fake install fraud affecting your funnel.