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Indian Internet Companies Suffering Fake App Installations

Indian internet companies grappling with fake app installations.



Several companies nowadays spend lump sum amount on making their applications stand out in the midst of the rest. Getting somebody to install a mobile application once can be a challenge, however toss in a touch of little something beneficial and they might be willing to download the application multiple times.

India's biggest mobile payments company Paytm's , senior VP Deepak Abbot says that this is a problem that they encounter on a daily basis and more unbridled on third-party platforms or even ad networks outside Facebook and Google.

As indicated by him, a few systems, lure users to install an application by offering something as irrelevant as cash backs or other benefits, for example, recharge packs.

What's more is that is to avail such incentives,, utilizing different internet addresses or device IDs a few users do install and uninstall such applications numerous times.

As indicated by the official report by the company around 20% of Paytm app downloads are fake, that alludes to users installing and deleting the application without investing any time or energy in it or participating in any exchange, bringing about nil returns on the cost incurred in motivating users to install the application.

Indian internet companies are as of now thinking about a sharp increment in such cases of mobile fraud even as rising traffic to their mobile platforms and driving application installation have turned out to become critical for development in a hyper-competitive environment. 

In a report last year by the US advertising and marketing company TUNE the extortion identified with mobile app installations in India is 1.7 times higher than the worldwide average, with 16.2% of the application installations in the nation being false.

 “India is the No. 1 country in terms of organic and inorganic app installs but we have seen an 85% increase in fraudulent installs of apps in the last one year,” said Sanjay Trisal, country manager, India, at Tel Aviv- “While the incentive for fraud in terms of parameters such as money made per click is much higher in other markets, India is an attractive country for fraudsters due to the sheer volume of installs” headquartered by the mobile marketing analytics and attribution firm AppsFlyer that works with more than 450 companies here including Shopclues, Paytm and Goibibo.
The most prevalent mobile frauds in India include:

·       Click fraud,’ which pertains to an ad network generating fake clicks;
·       Attribution fraud,’ or claiming credit for an app installation even if a user has downloaded the app through organic channels;
·       Device fraud,’ wherein multiple installations are claimed from the same device by changing the device’s unique IMEI number using software;
·       IP fraud,’ which involves multiple clicks from a blacklisted IP address;
·        Incentive fraud,’ wherein users are incentivised to install an app, which doesn’t result in lasting engagement.

 “Everyone is getting smarter, and the worst part is fraud networks wrongly claiming (an app installation to be)… coming from (their) network. That’s the worst part because I am having to pay for a loyal person (user) whom I actually need not be paying for ”said Pawrush Elavia, director, growth and digital, at music streaming company Saavn.

Albeit paying advertisement networks helped the increment of the quantity of new users for Saavn, a few of these clients were neither tuning in to nor spending time on the application, and that was the end point that Elavia acknowledged they needed to fix.

Companies are now adopting to various strategies to counter the hazard but there is yet no full proof solution for it.

Some are putting resources into building misrepresentation detection technologies , while others are banding together with platforms that have practical experience  and specialise in distinguishing such frauds.

Because of this mayhem the Paytm competitor MobiKwik, which had been working with in excess of 25 ad networks to acquire more clients, has turned out to be exceptionally choosy about whom it works with.

 “We have blacklisted a few ad networks, although that is not a permanent solution but we’re also working very closely with attribution companies to detect fraud cases early on, while we want our folks to focus on growth,” said Damandeep Singh Soni, head of marketing and growth at MobiKwik.

With paid marketing channels becoming increasingly unreliable,  internet companies are trimming expenditure on paid channels in a big way too.

Ad networks say they, too, are engaged in battling fraud as they work both with advertisers and publishers. “All major ad networks are working towards a fraud-free system, where they are challenged by increasingly evolving fraudsters on one hand and insufficient transparency from the marketer on the other,” said Dippak Khurana, CEO of ad network Vserv, which is backed by IDG Ventures India and Maverick Capital Ventures.

The company has engaged with independent companies that provide mobile fraud-detection tools. “The challenge is in our category is that if we use the push approach, it doesn’t work because then the uninstalls become really, really high. We have moved away from that approach,” said Sneha Roy, head of marketing at online furniture retailer UrbanLadder that mainly works with Facebook and Google to get past users to install its app again. “We let customers browse through our mobile website and develop some engagement that kind of pushes installs.”

Nevertheless in spite of it all there are still several internet companies, which are trying their level best  to move away from such rabidly chasing new installations and are instead focusing on improving engagement with users.


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