Mobile Fraud: How to spot them
By: Lorenzo Viscanti
Tags: Advertising, Mobile Fraud, Mobile Marketing, Fraud, Mobile Advertising

Mobile Install fraud: what is it and how you can spot them lorenzo viscanti Jun 8·6 min read

We all know very well that measuring the spending in mobile advertising is not easy at all. It’s not only a matter of attributing the install to the right channel or a mix of channels in a multi-touch approach. We also have to avoid spending in sources that are not as efficient as they say, or are involved in some kind of fraud scams.

Mobile Fraud is a common problem in our industry. It has spread through the years and it is not always easy to spot frauds in a complex digital ecosystem. Although there are different kind of install fraud, three of them are much more frequent than other. (da rivedere)

What is App Install Fraud

Fraud is where money flows. Easy said. You can find fraud at every level of the advertising funnels: From fake devices to impressions to the CPA performance.

Fraudsters engage in illicit activities to generate fake app installs by using automated tools, cheap human labor or techniques to deceive the attribution technology in use.

It’s not possible to prevent every kind of fraudulent activity in the app advertising ecosystem, but we can rely on machine learning to identify bad patterns in real time and try to avoid spending money with bad sources. Or, by looking at things from another perspective, we can try to concentrate the spending on the best sources.

There are three big kinds of fraud techniques in app install campaigns. Let’s look at each one of them.

Device Farms

Are you sure that all the devices where you videos or banners are shown do exist? Are you sure that devices where your app is installed belong to real people?

It may seem strange, but there are things called device farms, where hundreds or thousands of devices interact with your ads. But unfortunately no one is using those devices or seeing the ads. It’s just a fake group of devices, used to burn the advertising budgets.

This is true for farms where real devices are over tables or shelves, just to be used to consuming money advertisers spend. At the same time, virtual devices do exist, specially for Android. Those fake devices simulate real users that install and use our apps.

How can we detect this kind of fraud?

Mainly by looking at the network location and IP address. Most of these device farms use corporate or wifi connection that can be easily spotted with the help of some geolocation providers (at least in the USA or in Europe). In some cases this scam is done by using VPN services, but again a good IP geolocation database is a good solution to fight it.

Cheap Labor

We show ads to users so we can push them to download our apps and engage with them. But we want them to engage with our app because they have been informed about it and they decide to download and use it. This is playing by the rules in mobile advertising. But in some cases, fraudsters are paying real users a small amount of money to perform some actions that generate paid conversions for them.

This is called incentivized advertising. It is legal and used — mostly for games — and can bring real value to advertisers when used correctly. But fraudsters are using incentivized channels to drive actions that bring low or zero value to campaigns that are intended not to be run on this kind of media.

How can we spot this?

This is not easy to detect, but usually by looking at the time-delta between the click and the install a bad pattern emerges. Since the user is paid some money to perform an action, she does it very quickly. So from click on the banner to registration only a few seconds pass. By looking at this time window we can spot incentivized activity where it should be not allowed.

Stealing attribution

This is the hardest kind of fraud to detect. It is basically based on some technology that is used to deceive the attribution platform so that it considers an organic download as the results of paid advertising.

60% of app downloads are the result of one or more advertising actions (source: Appsflyer)

But there is more than paid advertising. It’s what happens organically. Users who search for our app and download it because they are really interested in it.

How do fraudsters deceive the attribution technology?

There are a few well known techniques — and probably many different ones have just been invented or will be invented in the near future — . Let’s have a look at some of them:

Cookie stuffing or click spam . By generating hundreds of thousands or a few million clicks fraudsters are able to intercept users who engage organically with our own app. It’s just brute force: fraudsters send a large chunk of clicks, well distributed over the time, so that they “tag” devices that are installing the app organically. Ho to avoid it? Look for the lowest conversion rates . Healthy conversion rates are over from .10/.20% and going up. Below that threshold something that might be malicious is probably happening.

or . By generating hundreds of thousands or a few million clicks fraudsters are able to intercept users who engage organically with our own app. It’s just brute force: fraudsters send a large chunk of clicks, well distributed over the time, so that they “tag” devices that are installing the app organically. Ho to avoid it? . Healthy conversion rates are over from .10/.20% and going up. Below that threshold something that might be malicious is probably happening. Click injection. This is very common for Android devices (but might exist with some limitations also for iOs). A malicious app can detect the upcoming install of another app and send a fake click very quickly. Thanks to this click the app is attributing the organic install to a (fake) touchpoint. Again, how can we spot it and avoid it? Simplest way is by looking at the time that passes between the click and the install. If the time window is too short, someone might be stealing the attribution.

Anti Fraud Solutions

On the market you can find very robust anti-fraud solution that can help the savvy advertiser to reduce the amount of money that is wasted every month with bad sources.

Why do you have to rely on an external service in order to protect the money you spend on ads? Fraudsters do study a lot how to steal money, so you cannot just rely on some internal analysis to prevent them from abusing your marketing campaigns. You need a very solid, thorough & frequently updated approach to the fraud issue. Relying on an external and specialized partner is the best way to smash the fraudsters.

There are two kinds of external services you can use:

Anti-fraud tools offered by the attribution technology provider

Independent anti-fraud solutions

The first one is (often) included in your subscription to the MMP (attribution provider), but it might be a biased service, as MMPs are not be considered truly independent from media sources or fraudsters. So, if you want to have the most independent approach you can decouple the anti-fraud provider from the attribution company you use. This is going to cost you more money, but can be the most efficient solution, specially for companies that have large budgets.