The war on fraudsters: 3 customers standing up to mobile fraud
The right protection is not only good for you, but also for the entire mobile ecosystem.
With an astonishing 11.5% of global app installs being tainted by fraudsters, the equivalent of $700-800 million in financial exposure to ad fraud, anti-fraud protection is vital for marketers, app companies, and ad networks alike.
Simply put, accurate and effective fraud protection is your insurance policy against the financial risk fraud attacks create. Without it, there is no guarantee you will safely buy cheaper traffic and achieve legitimate installs.
A key aspect of the right anti-fraud solution is consistent transparency for all parties.
As the platform identifies and blocks fraudulent traffic, your media sources will also be notified and receive full reports with total transparency of what was blocked and why. In turn, networks will be able to improve traffic quality, making the mobile ecosystem safer and higher quality for everyone.
Most importantly, massively scaled data is the core of dynamic and adaptable anti-fraud protection, given the continuous, improving ability of fraudsters to mimic legitimate traffic.
With AppsFlyer’s anti-fraud solution, Protect360, marketers have access to the data they need for preventative and ongoing fraud prevention, including deep dashboards, raw data, and APIs.
To highlight the scale on which fraud can cause significant financial risk, as well as the process in which AppsFlyer teamed up with advertisers to combat this risk, following are three case studies from several verticals and regions.
Case Study 1: Genera Games – from scattered to standardized
With over 100 million downloads, Spanish-based Genera Games is a leading global games publisher, collaborating with other well-known companies such as Dreamworks, Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, and Lucasfilm, among many others.
Given their great scale and success, one challenge they faced before working with AppsFlyer was their ability to accurately measure fraud-free campaigns across as many as 10 different networks on a single project. When they noticed that their dashboard showed a total number of downloads three times greater than the iTunes platform, they immediately took action to combat the pervasive fraud they faced.
Before AppsFlyer, Genera was able to identify only 1% of the fraudulent installs affecting them. Not only that, but the reports they were receiving from their former mobile measurement partners seemed to have gaps compared to their business results.
When Genera switched to AppsFlyer, however, they were able to immediately identify most fraudulent traffic, eliminating it from their investment decisions.
Focusing on statistics such as loyal users and new devices, the AppsFlyer analytics dashboard allowed them to pull granular level data and create reports for full transparency among their networks.
Read the full customer success story on Genera here.
Just like for Genera, while it is important to preventatively block fraudulent traffic at its source, Protect360’s reporting also makes sure both you and your networks are kept up-to-date on your campaign’s performance for the big picture understanding of your overall ROI.
Case Study 2: IQ Option – risk-free scaling
IQ Option is one of Europe’s leading fintech companies, offering a world-class online trading experience through their state-of-the-art platform and extensive support team. As an industry leader with over 20 million client accounts worldwide, heading into 2017, IQ Option was looking to bring in new partners that would scale their high-quality user base at affordable prices.
Some of the new partners that were brought on began raising fraud suspicion, seemingly generating high rates of fraudulent traffic.
Implementing Protect360’s automatic detection and blocking capabilities, IQ Option moved from significant financial exposure to agility in partnering with newer or unknown networks.
In partnering with AppsFlyer, IQ Option was able to scale at the fast pace they wanted and simultaneously save over $1 million with Protect360’s automatic blocking and their resulting optimized network payout.
While they may have achieved some of their current scale on their own, Protect360 emphasized a big picture understanding of IQ Option’s campaign and network investments to slash wasted budget costs and maximize the volume of high-quality users for this trading giant.
Case Study 3: Teebik – maximizing ROI, minimizing disruption
Based out of China, Teebik Games ranks among the largest mobile game publishers in the world with their many years of experience and high quality offerings. They offer several signature titles, including Fallensouls, Clash of Gods, and Shop Heroes, which are played by millions of users across 130 different countries.
One major problem was that increasing user acquisition costs began to affect their overall ROI. Because they were also balancing over 100 media partners, Teebik was having difficulty managing all networks on a larger scale while evaluating each of their performances for future campaign investment.
The goal was simple: high quality partners at the optimal price point.
The AppsFlyer universal SDK powerfully and accurately analyzes all integrated partners in real-time without additional SDKs, as well as refines KPIs based on granular-level data; by implementing our SDK, Teebik was easily able to collaborate with their 100+ partners according to the ROI they delivered.
In turn, they could optimize their campaign results, working with each partner at the right price and on scale, cutting back on marketing costs. More importantly, with the universal integration across partners, Teebik was able to boost their marketing ROI by accurately identifying pervasive fraud installs.
In the words of Jessie Chen, Teebik’s VP,
“AppsFlyer’s comprehensive mobile marketing analytics are a key part of our marketing activation, helping us bring out the best from our paid campaigns in the most cost-effective manner.”
With our scale of data at their fingertips, Teebik quickly maximized their ROI and spent less time struggling with pervasive and disruptive fraud.
Read the full customer success story on Teebik here.
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Summary
Moving closer to 2019, we can no longer deny that the rise of mobile app success and development has brought with it a rise, and evolution, in mobile ad fraud activity.
Even as recently as the beginning of 2017, what were once basic and easy-to-detect fraud tactics have since become scalable, highly sophisticated, and undetectable on the campaign level.
Bottom line: Having intuitive, adaptable anti-fraud protection in this mobile landscape is a must to not only combat pervasive fraud activity for your app, but also to concentrate expansive ad networks; maintain full transparency for yourself and partners; safely scale; and optimize your ROI. It’s a full package operation and it’s our responsibility as the entire mobile ecosystem to fight it.
