Imagine you are playing your favourite mobile game and see an advertisement that offers free coins if you download another app. You tap on the ad and download the app. Great! Everything is fine, right? Well, not quite, sometimes, not every click or download that you see is real. Unfortunately, hackers and disreputable players have enrolled many devices to generate fake downloads, clicks, or even dummy purchases, to steal money from advertisers.
This is where mobile fraud detection comes in. This technology is like a superhero shield for legitimate views, clicks, and installs. When companies want to improve their fraud protection, they typically rely on a mobile measurement partner such as Apptrove, which provides greater sophistication and assurance in fraud detection.
Why is the validity of mobile fraud detection such an issue?
Think about this from an analogy of a sport. You’ve got advertisers that spend some money to show ads and hope that real players (users) join in to make the ad viewable to people in real life. But if an outsider comes onto the field and starts adding robots (bot installs) onto the field, then you’ve lost the legitimacy of a real game. That is what happens without mobile fraud detection.
Fraudsters can simply create:
- Fake installs of apps that use bots.
- Why should I worry about these things?
By touching ad clicks:
- Click as many ads as possible automatically by simply running on display boards to drain budgets.
- Pretend to be loyal users and mislead advertisers about the loyalty of a played install.
Without mobile fraud detection, companies simply waste millions of dollars analysing the wrong results when that money could have gone into building better games, apps, or rewards.
The Tricks of Mobile Ad Fraud
Mobile fraud detection combats mobile ad fraud as one of the largest threats to digital marketing. Mobile ad fraud is digital pickpocketing. Normally, an ad will trigger fake clicks and installs, which create the illusion that ads are working when, in fact, they are not.
For example:
- A game studio has a budget of $10,000 to spend on ads.
- After running the ad, reports come back that there were 5,000 installs.
- However, of those 5,000 installs, half of them were downloads from bots (not humans).
This is mobile ad fraud, and if there were no mobile fraud detection, the game studio would never know.
How Mobile Fraud Detection Works
So, how does this mobile fraud detection work in combating fraud? Mobile fraud detection uses data, algorithms, and machine learning to track down suspicious activity. It looks for:
- Clicks that happen too fast to be human.
- Installs that are coming from impossible locations.
- Patterns that track a bot instead of a human.
If the system detects fraud, it is able to block it before an advertiser gets defrauded of their ad spend. This kind of fraud prevention helps make the digital ad world more secure and more trustworthy.
Fraud Prevention: Keeping the Game Fair
Just like referees in sports and gaming are responsible for fair play, fraud prevention is meant to ensure advertisers can advertise without fear of unfair play. Advertisers want to know that every dollar spent is making its way to real people. Mobile fraud detection tools help advertisers detect suspicious activities that could be caused by mobile fraud and allow marketers to shut down their shady traffic sources.
Without an effective fraud prevention program, advertisers would have lost faith in digital advertising once they were exposed to fraudulent traffic. With fraud prevention tools, advertisers are freed up to build better applications and experiences for their users.
Mobile Fraud Prevention vs. Detection
At this point, you may be wondering, “What’s the difference between mobile fraud detection and mobile fraud prevention?”
- Detection is finding the fraud that already exists.
- Prevention is stopping fraud from occurring.
There is a difference, and both are important. A good analogy is this: Crime prevention is like locking your door. If you lock the door, you don’t want someone to have access to your house, while crime detection is setting up a camera to have evidence if someone tries to break into your house. Therefore, fraud prevention and fraud detection are both designed to protect the house, in this case, the mobile advertising ecosystem.
Final Thoughts
In the world of digital advertising, things are not always as they seem! Bots, phoney clicks, and fake installs reside behind the scenes. Fortunately, mobile fraud detection will allow advertisers to mitigate these threats. With fraud prevention, mobile ad fraud can be reduced. When it is combined with strong mobile fraud prevention systems, the digital ecosystem becomes a safer place for everyone.
Next time you download a game after seeing an ad, keep this in mind—mobile fraud detection is working to ensure the ad dollars are going to real players (not bots). It acts as a superhero, always invisible, making the digital landscape fair, safe, fun, and free from fraud.
