Direct Advertiser: 90%+ of ad fraud in CPA campaign on Android

FraudScore is always eager to spread knowledge about ad fraud, and how cunning fraudsters can be. This article is about another case from a real FraudScore’s client, and his case about the importance of constant control of traffic quality.

Case: Direct Advertiser; Mobile traffic.

Story: Google Chrome mobile released a new version at the beginning of September , 21 — 94.0.4606. Usually, when a new version is released, it takes about one or two months to be installed to the majority of devices (of course — it depends on the geo).

FraudScore’s client had a CPA mobile campaign. All the traffic sources were not new but already checked and trusted. But in November one specific affiliate was getting more and more alerts in FraudScore’s system — traffic started to look suspicious.

FraudScore’s team drilled down the reports and here is what we detected:

99.57% of conversions (users) had no in-app. We looked at the detected ad fraud reasons — 92% of conversions were marked with Old Browser symptom. It turned out that these 92% of conversions were from browsers with 94.0.4606 — the version that was released at the beginning of September. And to the end of November this version was way outdated — the majority of traffic from other sources had 95 and 96 versions.

So we had two major symptoms — No in-app and Old Browser. The advertiser developed a case and went to the affiliate to negotiate and deal with the situation.

It looks like fraudsters had set up bots to trick the platform but they were not up to speed with the updates. It takes time and resources to cheat.

FraudScore’s team is constantly updating algorithms and our fraud detection techniques to stay ahead of fraudsters, and develop protection for our clients.

We want to remind you that there is always a 14-day free trial to test our system, so that you can see FraudScore’s solution from within. You’ll learn how FraudScore’s ad fraud prevention and detection algorithms can help your business and budgets to be protected.

This article is also published at FraudScore’s blog.