Back in 2017, Uber’s performance marketing team noticed something strange: turning off ad networks one by one had no effect on user acquisition.
Kevin Frisch, then Head of Performance Marketing, began a bold test. First, he reduced spend by 10%. No change. Eventually, Uber shut off $100 million two-thirds of its mobile ad budget.
The result? No measurable drop in app installs or rider acquisition.
Digging deeper, Frisch uncovered widespread attribution fraud: shady ad networks were claiming credit for installs Uber would have gotten organically.
In one case, apps showed more ad clicks than Uber had monthly active users.
Uber realized they weren’t paying for performance they were paying for stolen organic conversions.
They sued their mobile agency, Fetch, and later five ad networks for ad fraud totaling $70M+.
The case became one of the largest and most public examples of click spamming and mobile attribution fraud.
The takeaway? Without deep attribution audits, you could be spending millions… for nothing.
