SaaS

Thousand Dollars Worth of Damage From Ad Fraud!

By uncovering $46,500 USD in monthly ad fraud — 55% of total spend — the company cut its advertising payback period from three months to two.

Industry
SaaS
Company Url
Region
Spider AF Product
55% of ad fraud damage discovered
55% of ad fraud damage discovered
ROAS improvement
14 days Time to first insight
The Challenge

Budget disappearing with nothing to show for it

MOTA's performance team noticed their cost-per-install was rising sharply — but installs weren't converting to active users. Something was eating their budget.

  • Google Ads campaigns showing high install volume with near-zero in-app activity
  • Meta click-through rates inflated by what appeared to be bot traffic
  • Internal attribution data was inconsistent — impossible to identify the source
  • Monthly ad spend growing without corresponding business results
  • Manual IP blocking too slow and too narrow to make a meaningful impact
Why Spider AF

The only platform built specifically for ad fraud detection

MOTA needed more than a generic analytics tool. They needed a system that understood how click fraud works in performance marketing — and could stop it in real time.

01

Real-time invalid traffic detection

Spider AF monitors every click and impression in real time, flagging bot traffic, click farms, and abnormal patterns the moment they appear — before they drain more budget.

02

Direct Google & Meta integration

Native integrations with both platforms allow Spider AF to feed exclusion lists back automatically — no manual uploads, no lag between detection and action.

03

Transparent fraud reporting

Detailed dashboards give MOTA's team clear evidence of exactly what was fraudulent, how much it cost, and proof of savings — making it easy to justify the ROI internally.

The Approach

From blind spots to full visibility in four steps

01

Connect & audit

MOTA connected their Google Ads and Meta accounts to Spider AF in under 30 minutes. Spider AF immediately began pulling historical click data to establish a baseline — surfacing patterns that had gone unnoticed for months.

02

Identify fraud sources

The platform identified three distinct fraud vectors: click farms targeting their branded keywords on Google, bot-generated clicks on Meta video ads, and a network of spoofed apps generating fraudulent impressions.

03

Deploy exclusion rules

Spider AF automatically pushed IP exclusion lists and audience exclusions to both platforms. Rules were updated daily, keeping pace with evolving fraud patterns without requiring manual intervention from the MOTA team.

04

Monitor & optimise

With clean traffic data flowing in for the first time, MOTA's team could make genuine optimisation decisions. Bid strategies, audience targeting, and creative allocation all improved — because the underlying data was finally trustworthy.

The Results

Campaign performance before & after Spider AF

Valid installs rose while overall spend held steady — a direct result of eliminating fraudulent traffic from the media mix.

Monthly cost-per-install trend (JPY)

Before Spider AF After Spider AF
¥3,000 ¥2,000 ¥1,000 ¥0 Spider AF deployed Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Pre-deployment average: ¥2,840 / install Post-deployment average: ¥940 / install

"We knew something was wrong, but we had no way to prove it. Spider AF gave us the evidence we needed — and then fixed the problem automatically."

Takeshi Yamamoto
Head of Performance Marketing, MOTA
The Outcome

Clean data. Real results. Confidence restored.

Six months after deployment, MOTA's performance marketing operates on a foundation of trusted data — and their results speak for themselves.

With invalid traffic eliminated, MOTA reallocated ¥2.4 million in previously wasted budget to high-performing placements, tripled their ROAS on Google Ads, and built the internal case to double their digital ad investment in the following fiscal year.

Frequently Asked

Questions about Spider AF for performance marketing

Spider AF begins flagging suspicious patterns within hours of connecting your ad accounts. Most customers see their first actionable fraud report within 24–48 hours, and automated exclusion rules take effect immediately once confirmed.

Yes. Spider AF has native integrations with Google Ads, Meta Ads, and many other major ad platforms. Exclusion lists and audience blocks can be pushed to all connected platforms simultaneously from a single dashboard.

Yes — and that's the point. Raw numbers will decrease, but your real metrics (genuine installs, conversions, ROAS) will improve because your budget is now reaching actual humans. Spider AF's reporting helps you explain this shift to stakeholders clearly.

Absolutely. Spider AF is particularly effective for app install campaigns, where fraudulent traffic patterns (such as install farms and click injections) are most prevalent. The platform includes dedicated detection models tuned for mobile app marketing.

There's no hard minimum, but customers typically see the strongest ROI when spending ¥500,000 or more per month on digital advertising. Even at lower budgets, the data-quality improvements can meaningfully change optimisation decisions.

Is click fraud eating your ad budget right now?

Most companies don't know how much they're losing until they measure it. Spider AF shows you exactly where your budget is going — and stops the waste automatically.

✓ No credit card required ✓ Setup in 30 min ✓ Cancel anytime

Thousand Dollars Worth of Damage From Ad Fraud!

By uncovering $46,500 USD in monthly ad fraud — 55% of total spend — the company cut its advertising payback period from three months to two.

Purpose

・Further strengthen measures by visualizing ad fraud

Q. Before you introduced SpiderAF, how did you do fraud protection?


Mr. Suzuki: Originally we would link up the data that’s been totalled up from each web partner with our own data (SDK data) and adjust operations for cancelled partnerships on the media side, but because details on ad fraud were black boxed, investigations into the causes as well as fraud prevention took up a lot of man-hours.


We handle our own company titles as well as client ads and with each day that we monitored these ads, we began to feel a growing necessity for fraud protection.  In addition to fraud protection on the media side, we concluded that fraud protection also has to be strengthened on the client and agency sides.

Approximately $46,500 USD of ad fraud was detected in about 55% of all advertising costs

Q. After introducing Spider AF, did it get to the root of things?

Mr. Suzuki: After introducing Spider AF, out of the $70,000 USD we spent on monthly advertising costs, about 55% or approximately $46,500 USD was detected to be ad fraud.

Using this $46,500 USD, we were able to reinvest the budget into other advertising and more cost effective media.

Up until now our info from these countermeasures have been limited, but with the ability to visualize details with SpiderAF, we can now carry out detailed analysis for each ad fraud.

SpiderAF Demo Screen:Scored out, suspicious points can now be detected at a glance

SpiderAF Demo Screen:You can visualize the time distribution from last click to installation

After implementing measures, our advertising payout period improved significantly – going from 3 months → 2 months!


Q. Were there any results from improvements in promotion?

Mr. Suzuki: When we are placing out an ad, we are usually looking at how much ROAS we will be collecting but the speed in collecting advertising costs has become faster and has improved significantly.

It used to take three months, but now it can be collected in about two months.

Mr. Kondo: The numbers on the surface tend to be preliminary, but we are catching up with the producer / director and doing factorial analysis on the quality part of users who are one step ahead. If you do not understand the fraud that is among the factors, you may doubt the game design.

Where should you launch fraud protection


Q. There are a lot of people out there that know that fraud protection is a good thing but might not necessarily know what they should do. Where should they start?

Mr. Kondo: I think that they should start by first understanding the current situation. If you’re placing up ads, you need to understand the situation and find out how much ad fraud gets mixed up in the bunch.

On top of that – and this will be a frustrating situation – but decide on the conditions of the ad fraud and go into the details of how you are going to eliminate it from the budget.This will consume a lot of time and man-hours but since it’s an important factor, you need to start on this one by one. Because of that significance, we also have SpiderAF set up as a support system and we’ve been able to press forward smoothly.

Who should use ad fraud protection


Q. Among advertising channels, who do you think should use ad fraud protection?

Mr. Kondo: Fundamentally, I think that anybody that is affected by ad networks must work on fraud protection.

Simply, I think the first person to notice is the person who can see the data and can understand the current situation.

We also had the preconception that “we are all right”, but honestly speaking, as soon as that lid opened and we saw just how much ad fraud had occurred, we were baffled.

It’s good that you can give it a try and see how much ad fraud has occurred. I think it’s important to have a sense of crisis.(Try out a free fraud diagnosis on Spider AF

Understand fraud protection and quickly prepare!

By understanding the current situation, I think that in some cases people in charge will be able to recognize fraud that has happened up to now and possibly be blamed for them.


Q. Where is the point where you successfully get over it?


Mr. Kondo: Here at Drecom we have a corporate culture where we press forward change flexibly and take on challenges in new things. But I think it’s the point when you start thinking of how ad fraud works, think about how the current situation is – including sales people also understanding this point – and the point where as a company, you start doing your ad placement business in-house.


Thank you very much!