Click fraud or broken link

Same symptom, opposite causes, completely different responses. Worth ten minutes to tell apart.

6 August 2026 · PAD team

The shared symptom

Clicks arrive, installs do not. Cost per install climbs. The obvious conclusion is that traffic quality dropped, and fraud is the standard explanation for that.

Signals that point to fraud

• Clicks concentrated in unusual geographies or device models
• Click timestamps clustering unnaturally
• Traffic from placements you did not intend to buy
• The pattern appearing after a change in network or placement mix

Signals that point to a broken link

• The gap appears on traffic objectives but not install objectives for the same app
• iOS looks far worse than Android with identical creative
• The pattern is stable rather than spiky, because it is mechanical
• Tapping your own ad from inside the app produces a blank page

The last one is decisive and takes ten seconds. Do it before commissioning a fraud investigation.

Why the distinction matters

Fraud is handled by blocklists, network changes and refund claims, all of which take weeks and sour relationships. A broken link is fixed in an afternoon by changing one URL.

Diagnosing fraud when the real cause is a link means paying for the investigation and keeping the loss.

They can coexist

Nothing prevents both from being true. Rule out the link first, because it is the cheaper test, then investigate traffic quality with numbers that are no longer contaminated by taps that never arrived.