Q3 2025 MFA Benchmarks Highlight Mobile App Ad Quality Risks for PPC Budgets

Pixalate has released its Q3 2025 Global Made for Advertising (MFA) Benchmarks Report for mobile apps, and the findings underline how much budget risk now sits inside mobile in-app inventory. For PPC and user acquisition teams, the report confirms that MFA-style environments remain deeply intertwined with invalid traffic, weak user engagement and unreliable performance signals.

At ClickPatrol, we see the same pattern in live campaign data across Google Ads, Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads: when MFA inventory is not controlled, click fraud, fake installs and pointless repeated clicks quickly erode return on ad spend and distort optimization decisions.

What Pixalate’s Q3 2025 MFA benchmarks cover

The Q3 2025 release focuses on MFA risks in mobile apps across programmatic traffic. Pixalate analyzes billions of ad impressions and app properties across major app stores and ad exchanges, then classifies environments that match MFA characteristics such as mass-produced content, aggressive ad density and inconsistent user value.

For performance marketers, the report functions as a benchmark for how much MFA exposure is typical in in-app campaigns, and which app store categories, regions and platforms are most exposed to low quality ad environments.

Headline MFA benchmarks for mobile apps

Pixalate’s Q3 2025 mobile app MFA benchmarks highlight several key patterns that advertisers should factor into their traffic quality strategy.

• Meaningful MFA share of mobile app inventory: A notable share of programmatic in-app impressions continues to come from apps that Pixalate identifies as MFA, indicating that ad spend can easily flow into questionable environments if buyers do not apply quality filters.
• Differences by app store and platform: The report breaks down MFA exposure across major mobile ecosystems, showing that some combinations of store, device type and platform carry a higher likelihood of MFA inventory than others.
• Regional variation: MFA prevalence is not uniform. Certain regions show materially higher MFA penetration in mobile apps, which matters for geo targeted acquisition campaigns and brand safety controls.
• Links to invalid traffic risk: Apps classified as MFA are more likely to overlap with invalid traffic indicators, from suspicious engagement patterns to bot like activity, making them higher risk for wasted clicks and distorted conversion data.
• Ongoing presence despite enforcement: Even with increasing platform policies and industry scrutiny, the Q3 2025 benchmarks show that MFA apps remain a persistent feature of the mobile ad ecosystem.

Why MFA mobile apps matter for PPC and UA campaigns

While MFA definitions originally focused on web environments, the same concept now applies to mobile apps that prioritize ad monetization over real user value. For performance marketers running app install, lead generation or ecommerce campaigns into mobile placements, this has several practical implications.

Budget waste and unreliable signals

MFA inventory tends to generate a high volume of impressions and clicks but weak downstream performance. For PPC teams that rely on click through rates, installs or upper funnel engagement metrics, MFA traffic can appear efficient while hiding issues such as low intent users, accidental clicks or non human activity.

As a result, automated bidding strategies and budget allocation models can inadvertently push more spend into MFA heavy segments, because surface level metrics look attractive. This creates a loop of rising spend on low quality placements and falling spend on genuine users who may have slightly lower CTR but far better conversion quality.

Inflated conversions and remarketing pollution

In some cases, MFA apps may pass back events or conversion signals that do not line up with real business outcomes. Moreover, users exposed in MFA environments frequently get pulled into remarketing pools, where they continue to receive ads despite having minimal or no purchase intent. That inflates audience sizes, pushes up CPMs and makes it harder to read incrementality in performance reports.

MFA and invalid traffic: how the risks connect

Not every MFA app is fraudulent, and not every MFA impression is invalid. However, Pixalate’s findings show that environments with MFA traits are more likely to intersect with invalid traffic, such as automated clicks or manipulated engagement.

From our vantage point at ClickPatrol, we regularly see the following patterns on MFA heavy traffic:

• Clusters of repeated clicks from the same device or IP that never progress beyond shallow engagement.
• Unrealistic click timing, such as large bursts of activity in a fraction of a second or at unusual hours from a single device group.
• Extremely high click to install ratios for app campaigns that do not translate into meaningful in-app activity.
• High levels of short session landings, where users bounce within a second, consistent with accidental clicks in cluttered ad placements.

These behaviors drain budget and contaminate analytics. Without detection and blocking in place, advertisers may not realize how much of their apparent performance is driven by environments like MFA apps that contribute little to revenue.

What PPC and UA teams should do with the Q3 2025 MFA data

The value of Pixalate’s Q3 2025 Global Made for Advertising (MFA) Benchmarks Report for mobile apps lies in giving buyers a quantified view of risk across app categories, regions and platforms. For practitioners, the next step is to translate that into concrete controls within Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Ads and demand side platforms.

1. Review where your in-app traffic is really coming from

Audit placement reports to understand which mobile apps are consuming budget and how those apps perform after the click. Check for patterns such as:

• Apps with very high volume but weak conversion or retention.
• Unusual spikes in traffic from specific app IDs or bundles.
• Apps with extremely low time on site or almost zero post click activity.

Where possible, compare your high spend apps against the MFA classifications and risk trends highlighted in the Q3 2025 benchmarks.

2. Tighten exclusion lists and inventory filters

Use allowlists and blocklists more aggressively for in-app inventory. If the report indicates that certain categories or regions show higher MFA prevalence, consider stricter controls there, especially for campaigns running on tight return on ad spend targets.

For programmatic buyers, review supply partner settings related to MFA and low quality app traffic, and align them with your brand safety and traffic quality policies.

3. Combine MFA awareness with click level protection

Inventory level controls alone are not enough. MFA apps can appear and disappear quickly, and some low quality environments may not yet be formally classified. That is where click level fraud protection is critical.

ClickPatrol analyzes behavioral data points for every click across Google Ads, Meta and Microsoft Ads to identify signals of invalid traffic such as bots, repeated fake engagement or unusual device patterns. When our systems detect suspicious clicks, they can be blocked in real time so future spend is not wasted on the same source.

By combining insights from reports like Pixalate’s Q3 2025 MFA benchmarks with click level detection, advertisers can reduce exposure to both known MFA environments and emerging low quality traffic sources.

Cleaner data and safer scaling for mobile campaigns

For performance marketers, the biggest risk from MFA environments is not only wasted ad spend but the long term impact on optimization models. If your bidding strategies, creative tests and audience expansion decisions are based on distorted signals from MFA heavy traffic, you will underinvest in high quality users and overinvest in fake or low value activity.

Using third party benchmarks to understand where MFA risk is concentrated, and pairing that with click fraud protection, gives your team a more accurate picture of what actually works. That leads to cleaner data, more trustworthy analytics and stronger confidence when you scale budgets into mobile channels.

As MFA in mobile apps continues to surface in benchmark reports, we recommend that advertisers treat traffic quality as a core performance lever, not a compliance afterthought. If you want to reduce exposure to fake clicks and low quality app traffic, you can start a free trial of ClickPatrol or speak with our team to review your current campaigns and risk profile.

Abisola

Meet Abisola! As the content manager at ClickPatrol, she’s the go-to expert on all things fake traffic. From bot clicks to ad fraud, Abisola knows how to spot, stop, and educate others about the sneaky tactics that inflate numbers but don’t bring real results.

View all posts by Abisola (Abisola)

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