Gilad Barash, Brian Dalessandro, Claudia Perlich, Lauren Moores and Troy Raeder, all of Dstillery, described their findings in a recent paper.

In it, the authors claim that using clickthroughs to establish the performance of mobile ads is little more than “a fallacy”, and that this measure is unlikely to offer an insight into brand affinity. They had collected data from two weeks of mobile ad impressions for numerous brands, and found that many of the most clicked on ads were of the kind that might appeal to children.

“This begs the question on whether or not many mobile clicks are intentional, and whether or not the clickers are even adults,” the report said.

The authors suggested that monitoring app and desktop usage might be a more robust way to start to segment the mobile audience, in order to estabilish which individuals are positively engaging with brands.