The story is in the headline. It's significant, first of all, because some of the apps were targeted at kids, and second, because it represents a significant distortion in the online advertising market. As the author commented on Twitter, "...let's think about how much better off media would be if $19 BILLION went to real companies with real audience — instead of criminals." The operators would acquire real apps that already had users, shift ownership to a shell company, analyze audience behaviour and then transfer that behaviour to bots, and then flood the app with bots in order to collect revenue from the ads viewed. More on ad fraud.
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