Ad Fraud: How You Can Prevent 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 met for a discussion event on the challenges facing the ad fraud industry. Yobo Zhang å¼ äº’é¹, Vice President of Product at AdTiming and Wei Wang çŽ ‹çŽ®, Managing Director of China at AppsFlyer, shared their views on how the industry should work together to combat this growing problem.

Advertisers and app developers have rightly been concerned that a significant amount of marketing and user acquisition budgets are being lost due to fraud, with AppsFlyer estimating the loss worldwide at 700-800 million. US dollars in Q1 2018 alone. AppsFlyer’s report, titled ‘The State of Mobile Fraud in Q1 2018’, shows that mobile app marketers were exposed to 30% more fraud compared to with 2017, and the proportion of fraudulent installs grew by 15%, contaminating 11.5% of all marketing campaigns. installed. ‘

Bots and device farms are being used to defraud businesses, especially in shopping, gaming, finance, and travel on Android and IOS devices. The net effect, then, 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, imposing a great challenge for marketing teams. Therefore, from a professional point of view, advertisers are advised and developers who pass these criteria on to third parties, such as AppsFlyer, “said Wang Wei, general manager of AppsFlyer in China.

Yobo Zhang, Vice President of Product at AdTiming, said: “From a long-term point of view, ad fraud is similar to quenching your thirst with poison. We look forward to working with more data platforms or anti-fraud parties to fight ad fraud. AdTiming has developed an anti-cheat product that integrates with the AppsFlyer protocol to identify, quarantine and remove fraudulent clicks and installs. This is the kind of technical solution that advertisers and developers should do as part of the security solution in the entire value chain of mobile devices. marketing “. Zhang added: “Fraud is an industry-wide problem, only by sharing development protocols, SDK, API within our industry that we can meet 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 Product at AdTiming

AppsFlyer’s Wei Wang agrees: “A promising trend is the consensus reached on the severity and harm of cheating across the industry, with an increasing number of advertisers, ad platforms and third parties joining the row to curb the traps. together. “

Wei Wang, China General Manager of Appsflyer

The issue facing the industry is one that AppsFlyer has documented in their 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 comes 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 the 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 as we interact with the industry to make changes to combat this threat,” said Yobo Zhang.

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

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