Developer finds 60% of Google App Ad installs were bots after $220 spend

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A developer running a Google app advertising campaign spent $220 and discovered that approximately 60% of the resulting app installs were generated by bots rather than real users. The findings were shared in a blog post on the DayZ Legacy game website, raising concerns about the quality of traffic delivered through Google's app ad network. The developer's experience highlights a broader issue of bot farms inflating install metrics, effectively wasting advertiser budgets. Such fraudulent activity undermines the reliability of mobile app campaign analytics and return-on-investment calculations for small developers.

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