I don't doubt there are fraudulent schemes going on, and if the figures are to be believed, there's a fair sum to earn. I'm pretty sure that these apps will not last, and as the story says, Google has already suspended some of the apps mentioned.

Thousands of mobile applications are secretly running ads that can't be seen by users, defrauding marketers and slowing down smartphones, according to a new report by Forensiq, a firm that tracks fraud in online advertising.

Over the course of the 10-day study, one percent of all devices observed in the U.S. ran at least one app committing this kind of fraud; in Europe and Asia, two to three percent of devices encountered fake ads. Forensiq identified over 5,000 apps that display unseen ads on both Apple and Android devices. Report: Invisible Ads on Mobile, the $895 Million Fraud [bloomberg.com]