The summer of 2018 was not a good summer. It saw a huge number of massive bot attacks that resulted in high rates of app install fraud . At that time, thanks to protection solutions, it seemed that the attacks had decreased to their initial level. Now, again, the data is not so encouraging.
22.6% of non-organic app installs globally are being identified as fraudulent. This means marketers lose up to $2.3 billion in 6 months.
, collected in a study commissioned argentina phone number by AppsFlyer . Added to this is the lack of awareness on the part of marketers of the seriousness of this issue: 41% of marketers do not consider mobile ad fraud to pose any risk to their advertising spend.
App install fraud is a multi-billion dollar threat to the app marketing ecosystem: “We have noticed that scammers are moving much faster: while in 2018 they needed 1-2 months to react, now they do so in just 2-3 days. This is an indicator of the existence of increasingly large operations supported by data-driven professionals who extract the information,” the study says.
The targets are large apps, with high volumes of non-organic installs. When comparing April and June 2019, the increase in fraud rate among large apps was 30 % and 70% higher than in medium and small apps, respectively.
When comparing fraudulent app installation by operating system, Apple’s iOS is far less vulnerable . Not only is fraud on Android more than 6 times higher, but its upward trend is much more pronounced. This is because of Apple’s “walled garden” approach, which includes a strict vetting process for apps seeking entry into the store.
mobile fraud
Across all platforms, more than 1 in 4 apps have a serious fraud problem. This means that scammers are casting a wide net to try and catch big fish that aren’t well protected.
"We found that the bigger the fish, the higher the concentration of apps that are targeted by fraud: 20% of large apps have more than 30% fraud , compared to 13% of mid-sized apps and 8% of small apps," says AppsFlyer.
“In recent months, we have seen rates rise, which once again emphasises that when it comes to fraud, you should never rest on your laurels. Fraud changes rapidly and fraudsters demonstrate increasingly advanced methods, backed by larger organisations, skilled developers and experienced data scientists,” they note.