How to prevent fraud in mobile marketing? 4 Expert Tips

Shocking statistics of mobile fraud! Here are some featured songs: 75% of “unexplained” clicks for Upsler; 40% of fraudulent clicks according to Trademob; A $1 billion marketing budget was wasted in 2015 on bots that generate fake app installations, according to Forensiq…

“We have been subject to fraud for years, but we have experienced a sharp increase in fraudulent practices and traffic since April 2016”, details Hélène Queriault, Addict Mobile’s VP Operations. , All the advertising agencies we work with are unanimous: Fraud Explosion in 2016, Fraudsters are using increasingly sophisticated technical tools, and detecting them is becoming more and more technical. ,

Marketers: How can you avoid being fooled in the world of mobile marketing?

Fraud: What You Shouldn’t Pay to the Advertiser!

Frauds are generated by corrupt publishers (ie owners of mobile applications or mobile websites). They claim to display your ad on their app/site, and generate clicks and/or downloads to be paid to them by the ad network that distributes your ad.

There are three types of fraud:

• fake traffic : Generated by bots (robots). These are computer farms that simulate the generation of clicks and installs;
• diverted traffic : These are actual clicks and installs of your app that you didn’t want. For example, downloads made in the Philippines or Mongolia when you wanted to download in France. Or even encourage downloads when you want quality downloads, done multiple times on the same mobile and numbered, etc. ,
• biological fraud : This is your natural traffic that is diverted and that is billed to you as paid traffic! For example, millions of false clicks are generated by a virus (click spamming) on ​​millions of ads for hundreds of applications such as when you click on the closing cross of an ad and the virus counts a click. And if you ever want to download Application X naturally, the virus will count the download as coming from its (fake) click.

How to protect yourself from fraud?

Upstream, before you start your campaign:

1. pay close attention to choose your partners , If you buy traffic from qualitative sources, you will be exposed to less risk of fraud than if you work with incentive traffic. However, all advertising agencies can fall prey to fraudulent publishers, even the most famous from the Google network such as AdMob and GdN. Today anyone can download the SDK from Google and display ads in their mobile app/website without any control. It is therefore only an afterthought that one can identify fraudulent publishers. To do this well, your selection of partners should not be limited to the level of advertising agencies, but should go down at publisher levelin each control room. for example in addict mobile a database (dmp) To select trusted editors.

2. Use the anti-fraud features of your tracking tool. Some tracking tools allow fraudulent behavior to be filtered, for example by blocking certain IP addresses and identifying click spamming.

After starting your campaign:

3. Monitor your visible KPIs on a daily basis: click-through rates, download rates, conversion rates (openings, sessions, registrations, purchases) within your application. As soon as a KPI comes out from the average, one can suspect fraud. For example, if the conversion rate within the app is unusually low, we suspect incentivizing traffic. If the install/click rate is unusually high, we would also suspect incentive traffic or bots. It is important to look at these KPIs at the level of each publisher (within each ad network) to be effective and detect abnormal behavior! And beyond monitoring KPIs, we should be alert to any sudden extremes in volume over 24-48 hours: any rapid change in momentum should be watched carefully.

4. Once abnormal behavior is identified, conduct an in-depth analysis of campaign data at the relevant publisher. This data comes from your tracking tool.

we recognize fake traffic looking at :

• IP Addresses: If the same IP address (or a pattern of similar IP addresses) generates a significant amount of downloads;
• Device ID: If the same Device ID has generated multiple downloads;
• Mobile names (“Claire’s iPhone”, etc.): If the same name is detected at a high frequency;
• Mobile type/brand: If a large amount of downloads are generated on the same type of telephone;
• Delay between click and install: If it is very close to zero.

we recognize Diverted traffic, i.e. of unwanted quality looking at :

• Average time of action or use of VPN: To identify traffic carried from one foreign country to another time zone;
• Jailbroken Mobile: To identify traffic not counted by the AppStore;
• The conversion rate is too low on your mobile website or in your application: to identify unwanted incentive traffic.

, To deeply analyze this big data, identify fraud and blacklist fraudulent publishers, we use our Addict mobile technology , Helen Quiriault, VP Operations at Addict Mobile explains. , We identified 33,000 fraudulent downloads for Shopmium in the UK in July 2016: 2/3 of the month’s campaign was unreliable. Once the fraud was identified, we interacted with the partners. Ultimately we saved 70% of the budget. ,

Mobile fraud has taken on worrying proportions for marketers. To avoid scams and make your acquisition budget profitable, equip yourself Technologies designed to detect fraud (Tracking SDK, DMP and Media Purchasing Technology), and get help from mobile expert, because these technologies are very different from the digital web.

About the Author :

Claire Calligaro, Co-Founder, Country Manager of DAF/Addict Mobile: Prior to creating Addict Mobile, Claire co-founded the mobile game studio Mob in Life. She, as CFO and CEO, managed funding and development, growing games totaling over 10 million players. Prior to Mob in Life, Claire was a business developer for Alcimede, a strategy consulting firm, where she oversaw the UK market with a team of 10 people. Claire now oversees Edict’s relationships with French clients: she is responsible for understanding their operational issues, proposing appropriate strategies, and the success of the campaigns over the long term.

Addict Mobile was founded in 2014 by three mobile marketing experts. Today, it is dedicated to R&D on mobile advertising technologies and services. It is the most efficient mobile technology today that offers 100% profitable performing mobile marketing campaigns, reaching its customers’ objectives and KPIs and guaranteeing profitability.

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