If youve been following our Big Issues series of features, youll know that ad fraud and ad blocking are major concerns throughout the mobile marketing industry at the moment. However, according to the head of operations for Adblock Plus, fraud could actually be driving more consumers to adopt ad blocking tech.

“Earlier this year a survey from YouGov revealed that 72 per cent of consumers in the UK felt concerned about their private information online, including the safety of their emails, files and pictures,” said Ben Williams. “As consumers start to place a greater reliance on mobile technology for viewing, storing and sharing data its likely these concerns will transcend across.

“If that is the case, the mobile advertising industry is going to have to start addressing some pretty big grievances currently in the market, notably the rise in mobile advertising fraud.”

A recent study focused on fraud detection found that thousands of mobile apps in both Apple and Googles app stores were misleading marketers by loading invisible ads that cannot be seen by users, costing the marketing industry an estimated $1bn (£644m) a year.

The study supports concerns that ad fraud is rapidly spreading from online ads to the mobile app ad market, and given that the majority of time on mobile devices is spent within apps, this could have a massive impact on the industry as it grows.

“The figures from the fraud detection report are likely to be quite worrying for advertisers and marketers, as the study suggests that malicious apps are expected to account for a disproportionately large amount of the ad space for sales amongst ad exchanges,” said Willaims.

“If this continues to escalate, then the mobile app advertising industry runs the risk of suffering the same fate as the online industry over security concerns with advertising. The next challenge therefore will be addressing negative perceptions of mobile advertising, amongst mainstream consumers, who are likely to switch off if they feel threatened, turning to tools which can support their security needs, such as ad blocking technology.

“The popularity of ad blocking shows just how eager consumers are for wanting to avoid annoying and intrusive adverts regardless of whatever device they are on. The challenge for the entire ecosystem is to be able to monetise sustainably while eliminating threats like this.

“Whats perhaps changed is that now no one is disputing that ad blockers have a seat at the table. So while its hard to imagine a world without fraudsters, or bad ads for that matter, if users, ad blockers, privacy advocates and ad industry representatives address challenges like this together, solutions can be found.”