AdMob publisher id protection

[Agris Ausējs]

Do developers need somehow obfuscate AdMob publisher id's in my app code?
I'm asking because last few days I noticed dramatic increase on ad clicks so I started to check what's going on and found out that some how from Unknown location in geo stats I have received almost 80% CTR, but in same time my app analytic data showed no changes at all comparing to other days. Then I dug deeper and found out that my other apps also was affected by this high CTR, but do to they made very low request rates I didn't noticed any changes. Now I found that these unrealistic CTR rates from Unknown location is some how proportional to total request count. For safety measures I have deleted all affected site(app) accounts to stop this abuse and sent mail to AdMob support, because I'm quit worried about my account do to this looks like click fraud. At first I thought that it was some kind of bug in stats data, but when that continued also in next day then my thoughts changed. I have found many other developers who have the same problem which started around middle of last month.
Right now I'm very confused.

[Tostis]

I've the same problem. Which action you took to solve it?

[melvin marte]

I'm facing the same issue. I contacted admob support and explained the issue the best I could, I hope there's a good reason for this unusual CTR% and that they will investigate, but I definitely believe there is somebody behind this.

[Eduardo Teixeira]

Segunda-feira, 29 de Julho de 2013 3:21:00 UTC+1, melvin marte escreveu:

I'm facing the same issue. I contacted admob support and explained the issue the best I could, I hope there's a good reason for this unusual CTR% and that they will investigate, but I definitely believe there is somebody behind this.

Same problem with some of my apps. If admob answers you please share the possible solution. Thank you!

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

There are no immediate plans to encrypt the publisher ID. We'll keep an eye on this particular issue though. If multiple folks are seeing this, it's more likely that it's a network-wide problem than a few malicious apps.

[YH Yang]

After reading your post, I checked my site geo stats, and found that I have high CTR (49%) from Unknown too, however, the requests from Unknown is about 1% of requests from worldwide.

2013/7/30 Eduardo Teixeira <eduardomo...@gmail.com>

Segunda-feira, 29 de Julho de 2013 3:21:00 UTC+1, melvin marte escreveu:

I'm facing the same issue. I contacted admob support and explained the issue the best I could, I hope there's a good reason for this unusual CTR% and that they will investigate, but I definitely believe there is somebody behind this.

Same problem with some of my apps. If admob answers you please share the possible solution. Thank you!

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[malesku]

I can also observe very high CTR - over 80% from "unknown" in my application for about week. Application is new to market and hasn't may users. Clicks from unknown are paid approximate 0.01$ each. I've found few topics regarding this issue e.g. http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/1847-admob-geo-stats-unknown-location-4.html.

[cnd]

Same problem. Very high CTR and large no of clicks.

[Smsrobot]

We are also having same issue on one of our apps, over 80% from unknown location. What should we do?