The silent drain of the Fintech: how the Malgasta Budget advertising fraud and deceives the pockets

The hidden threat: how fraudulent traffic is undermining the Fintech marketing

88 billion dollars. That is what cost digital advertising fraud to marketing specialists around the world in 2023, and losses are expected to increase until 172 billion dollars in 2028 (Statesman, 2024).

In Spain, where Fintech continues to expand quickly, the risk is especially pressing: it is estimated that 18 % of mobile applications advertising is invalidone of the highest rates in Europe (Pixalate). APPSFLYER also reports that 15 % of world expenditure on mobile media It is wasted in advertising fraud, lost by click fraud, bots and invalid traffic facilities before reaching real users (AppsFlyer).

Fraud is a silent murderer of the budget. Without an effective detection of bots traffic and false traffic prevention, financial technology marketing specialists run the risk of optimizing campaigns based on false data, which leads to an increase in acquisition costs, to a useless expense and a bad decision making. Advertising networks often aggravate the problem by adding traffic from multiple sources, many of which are not verified.

The result? Emerging financial technology companies are spent the acquisition budgets without achieving real growth of users, while scammers take advantage of defective attribution models.

The traffic trap: how the facilities and false clicks distort the campaigns

Advertising fraud is not only evil money, but distorts the metrics on which marketing professionals depend. Each installation or false click inflates the CPA and biased the LTV, which hinders effective scalability.

Added traffic of broad networks often generates low quality or encouraged facilities. The scammers exploit this complexity through the supplant of domains, the stacking of ads and the injection of clicks, distorting the user acquisition performance (Fraud Protection Platform).

«Advertising fraud will never disappear. But it does not have to define your results: marketing professionals only have to take appropriate measures to detect and stop it ».

— Charles Manning, executive director of Kochava

For financial technology companies, there is a lot at stake. Fraudulent data undermines investor confidence and distort growth forecasts, which puts more than advertising performance at risk.

Beyond traffic: the risks for the reputation of the undefted sources

Fraud can go beyond facilities and affect the integrity of its application. In 2024, a Trojan named Necro Loader infected more than 11 million devices worldwide through Malicious ads SDK. He could launch invisible ads, execute code remotely and register users in payment services without their consent (Kaspersky Lab).

The source? An integration of not verified ads used by two high profile applications on Google Play. Both were eliminated after massive infections, but the damage (to the confidence of the users and the reputation of the developers) was already done.

For Fintech applications based on trust, this is not just a matter of performance, it is an existential issue.

Contramark: real solutions for real users

To fight fraud, Marketing Fintech specialists must give priority to clean traffic and transparency. Tools such as Appsflyer provide real -time fraud detection, filtering the traffic not valid before the results.

But the detection is only half of the solution. The place where the ads appear also matters.

That’s where it comes into play Avow. As an OEM mobile advertising specialist, AVOW helps financial technology brands to carry out campaigns in safe and fraud resistant, such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and others.

Together, these original equipment manufacturers represent most of the smartphone market in Spain: Xiaomi (30 %), Samsung (27,7 %), Huawei (8,7 %), OPPO (4,6 %) y vivo (1,3 %)which makes them powerful channels to reach users who prioritize mobile devices directly on their devices.

When working with original equipment manufacturers, advertisers can bid directly on the device, eliminating intermediaries and guaranteeing total transparency and brand safety.

In combination with the segmentation for behavior and Avow appointment, Fintech applications can reach users with a high purchase intention, willing to request a loan, finance an account, buy cryptocurrencies, negotiate shares, make a purchase and much more.

It is a model that is already giving results. Kredivo, one of the main digital credit platforms in Southeast Asia, achieved a conversion rate of 46 % of loan installation requests through Avow OEM associations.

«What is really interesting to work with Avow is that they generate less fraudulent traffic. This helps us a lot because it allows us to focus on finding new users without having to worry so much about fraud ».

— Kelvin Saputra, Kredivo (Behind the Apps Mobile Marketing Podcast)

Conclusion

Fraudulent traffic not only exhausts budgets, but diverts growth, corrupts data and erodes confidence in a credibility -based sector. For financial technology marketing specialists, cleaning traffic is not optional, but fundamental for sustainable growth.

By combining real -time fraud detection with transparent channels and fraud resistant, such as mobile advertising of original equipment manufacturers, financial technology brands can finally focus on acquiring real users, instead of pursuing misleading metric. And with partners like Avow, They help navigate these ecosystems, it is easier than ever reaching high quality users where it really matters.