Blocking Mobile Ad Fraud and Growing Conversion Rates
As mobile devices become more and more prevalent, so does mobile app fraud. The increasing complexity of mobile devices also makes it harder to detect fake installs, clicks and impressions. How can advertisers protect themselves from losing money to fraud?
Common Types of Fraud in Mobile Marketing
To understand how to detect fraud, let’s learn about the most common fraud types.
Bots and Fake Devices
Bots are automated programs designed to imitate real user actions such as clicks, installs and in-app activities. They impact marketing campaigns directly by draining advertising resources on fake users with zero value. Most often bots are run directly off servers, but they can also run off fake devices in click farms.
A click farm is one of the older types of mobile fraud. This is a physical location where fake devices are stored to mimic various user activities: clicks, installs, mobile engagement, social media followings, app store ratings and reviews etc. Click farmers use various tactics to hide their activity, like resetting their device IDs with each install.
Click Flooding / Click Spamming
Click spam happens when a fraudster spreads a code which generates numerous fake clicks on the ad. When some unrelated install after those clicks happens, the fraudster attributes it to those fake clicks to get the reward.
Click spam can occur in background mode. This means that the illegal code fake-clicks on the ads when the app is run. Most often the user doesn’t even see the ad that is clicked on. The code can also present views as clicks. Or it can be produced via fake devices on click farms.
Click Injection
Click injection is an advanced version of click spam. In this case the fraudster uses an infected app to see when the user starts downloading a new app on the device. The fraudster creates a fake click and attributes the installation to it to get a reward.
Unwanted traffic sources
This kind of traffic is usually called invalid rather than fraud. Despite the name, it still steals advertising budgets. It uses traffic sources that are beyond the advertiser’s rules or expectations, like adult websites or incentivized campaigns.
Problems In Detecting Fraud Traffic Sources
Traffic sources with low conversion rates show a big number of clicks coming from duplicate IPs, VPN or Bots.
Traffic rebrokering
The fraudsters can jump from network to network, making it impossible to permanently ban a traffic source. This leads to a constant cat-and-mouse game between advertisers and fraudsters. The fraudsters simply use different IDs every time, making it very difficult to permanently ban a bad traffic source.
VPNs
Fraudsters abuse VPNs to hide their IPs and avoid being blocked. Moreover, the VPN makes the advertiser think that the traffic comes from the preferred location.
All these kinds of fraud can be detected efficiently. Appmetrica + 24metrics is an integrated solution that lets you remove fake clicks from your analytics and increase conversion rates. The fraudulent conversions are rejected automatically, while you get the relevant analytics without fake clicks and invalid traffic sources.
Let’s have a closer look at what these tools have to offer.
AppMetrica + 24metrics Partnership Integration
AppMetrica is an MMP (mobile measurement partner) and an all-in-one solution for analytics and mobile marketing. It provides transparent statistics on any metric you might need, from data in ad accounts for every channel to all the interactions users have with an app.
What makes AppMetrica unique is its ability to merge data on user in-app experience and ad channel metrics. That means you can analyze installs and purchases for each channel and focus on the most efficient ones. You can detect channels with the highest LTV from the very beginning of the campaign. Accurate data and high quality reports via AppMetrica yield a better setup for growing your app.
AppMetrica Product Owner
We realized that AppMetrica users can’t wait to have an anti-fraud tool within their MMP. After studying the market, we came up with 24metrics — a perfect solution to detect bad traffic sources.
We developed a simple and efficient integration and are proud to present AppMetrica’s bundle with 24metrics — a cost-effective and affordable solution for keeping your analytics fraud-free.
24metrics is the only solution provider on the market that offers impression, click and conversion screening in a single product. That makes AppMetrica + 24metrics integration the optimal solution for marketing and product analytics. You can also optimize your advertising campaigns via Appmetrica’s A/B tests, make personalized offers to your users via push notifications and manage your app’s stability by monitoring crаsh & error reports.
24metrics Managing Director
Through our collaboration with AppMetrica, we leverage their vast mobile analytics network to expand our market presence.
This alliance underscores our dedication to protect advertisers from fraudulent tactics in the mobile app market allowing advertisers a clearer vision of their marketing ROI.
You can get started with AppMetrica for free: standard reports and basic events are unlimited. The basic free functionality includes A/B tests with 2 simultaneous testing modes. You also get configuration of up to 100 flags at the same time, in-app subscription tracking, tracking for basic events, revenue reports, all standard reports and API access.
For companies that need more custom data and advanced functionality, AppMetrica has custom plans and new features that will help drive your mobile app’s metrics skyward.
Every new AppMetrica client receives a free 500k Conversion Scan from 24metrics. Use the promo code AppMetrica500.
How to integrate AppMetrica and 24metrics:
1. Create an integration inside 24metrics
2. Copy the 24metrics Integration ID
3. Create a Tracker inside AppMetrica
4. Select 24metrics from the Media Source list and Postback Destination list
5. Select Event / Installation and add the Integration ID in the Postback URL. Replace {24metricsIntegrationID} with the actual Integration ID copied from the 24metrics Integration Screen.
What you get :
- Automatic checks for duplicate IPs, bots, VPNs, click farms, click spam, exceeding old devices, device ID checks and more.
- Customizable filters per publisher and app
- Realtime Fraud Screening
- Transparent Rejection Reasons for every Conversion
- Automatic rejection of fraudulent conversions
- Realtime report sharing with transparent rejection reasons
- Detailed reports available for download
- Option to track real time screen clicks and block click farms before reaching the AppStore
Conclusion
The battle against mobile app fraud rages on. Advertisers and mobile app owners need innovative solutions to deal with evolving fraud tactics.
The AppMetrica+ 24metrics collaboration gives you a complete range of tools to detect existing fraud techniques. It is a powerful solution to detect the most efficient channels and monitor all the interactions users have with an app. A strong immunity to fraud lets you see clearly where every dollar goes.
Join AppMetrica and get a gift from 24metrics — a free quality check of 500,000 conversions using the promo code AppMetrica500.
