Ad Fraud: How You Can Stop Bots And Device Farms From Stealing 30% Of Mobile App Revenue

AdTiming, the world’s premium mobile marketing platform, and AppsFlyer, the world’s leading mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform, recently came together for a discussion event on the challenges facing the industry due to ad fraud. Yobo Zhang å¼ äº’é¹ , Vice President of AdTiming Product and Wei Wang 王玮, General Manager of China at AppsFlyer, shared their views on how the industry needs to work together to combat this growing problem.

Advertisers and app developers have rightly worried that a significant amount of user acquisition and marketing budgets will be lost to fraud, and AppsFlyer estimates the loss worldwide at $700-800 million. only in the first quarter of 2018. The AppsFlyer report, titled “The State of Mobile Fraud in the First Quarter of 2018,” shows that mobile app marketers were exposed to 30% more fraud compared to 2017 , and the proportion of fraudulent installs increased by 15%, contaminating 11.5% of all marketing driven. install.’

Bots and device farms are used to defraud businesses, especially in shopping, gaming, finance, and travel on Android and IOS devices. So the net effect is that the business model for developers and publishers is threatened in the short term due to lost revenue and in the long term due to the credibility of the mobile channel itself in delivering value to advertisers. “Advertisers and developers certainly have a corresponding reaction to fraud, however, it is a professional job that poses a great challenge for marketing teams. Therefore, from a professional point of view, advertisers and developers are advised to developers passing these criteria on to third parties like AppsFlyer,” said Wang Wei, General Manager of AppsFlyer in China.

Yobo Zhang, vice president of products at AdTiming, said, “From a long-term standpoint, ad fraud is akin to quenching a thirst with poison. We look forward to working with more data platforms or anti-fraud groups to fight ad fraud. AdTiming has developed an anti-cheat product that integrates with the AppsFlyer protocol to identify, quarantine, and remove fraudulent installs and clicks.This is the kind of technical solution that advertisers and developers should do as part of their security solution. throughout the value chain of mobile devices. marketing.” Zhang added: “Fraud is an industry-wide problem, it is only by sharing development protocols, SDKs, APIs within our industry that we can fulfill our responsibility. Industry associations and agreed best practices will also play a role, both here in China as in the whole world”. world”

Yobo Zhang, Vice President of AdTiming Products

AppsFlyer’s Wei Wang agrees: “A promising trend is the consensus that is building on the severity and harm of cheating across the industry, with an increasing number of advertisers, ad platforms, and third parties join the ranks to stop cheating”. total.”

Wei Wang, CEO of Appsflyer in China

The problem facing the industry is one that AppsFlyer has documented in its report titled ‘State of Mobile Fraud: Q1 2018’, which covered 6,000 apps and 10 billion installs over a 5-month period. It found that fraud is coming in waves and that bots are now the most dangerous threat, replacing device farms as the most popular form of attack responsible for more than 30% of fraudulent installations. Shopping, gaming, finance and travel apps are hardest hit, with some $275 million exposed during the first three months of 2018.

“AdTiming is taking the issue of ad fraud very seriously both within our company and by engaging with the industry to make changes to combat this threat,” said Yobo Zhang.

As ad fraud continues to jeopardize the entire AdTech industry, it is urgent that the entire community address this issue to ensure the well-being of the industry and the combined interest of the mobile marketing community.