App Growth Without Fraud Prevention is Fiscally Irresponsible

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Are you a company that is critically dependent on acquiring new users via app installs for revenue growth? Then you need to have a fraud prevention tool in place. And when I say “fraud prevention tool,” I mean much more than an IP database.

The mobile in-app software ecosystem differs significantly from the web or mobile web environment. The app-install environment includes multiple types of tracking SDKs for attribution, advertising inventory, and monetization. This has created a welcoming environment for sophisticated fraudsters to pose as legitimate companies and hack in-app software. Their primary purpose is to find and steal cost-per-install and cost-per-action bounties – fooling marketers, ad networks, and even programmatic demand-side platforms.

“Our data shows that sophisticated bot fraud and SDK spoofing is still on the rise. SDK spoofing is the future of ad fraud, increasing from 25% of all app install fraud in 2019 to 37% in 2020,” according to Soner Sensoy, Interceptd’s Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer.

Here is why it is absolutely critical to your company’s financial success to start blocking your exposure to fraudulent advertising activity:

Growth Budget Savings: Protect your precious install growth budget and prevent wasting your ad spend on organic attribution fraud – installs that should have been free, but instead were hijacked and spoofed by the software hackers to win the bounty. Interceptd will protect your advertising spend from wastage and we provide an install deduction service to save you time when truing-up with your supply partners each month.

Clean Data vs. Corrupt Data: If you aren’t blocking fraudulent installs, then you aren’t blocking fake post-install events. When you spend time analyzing new user event activity and identifying active user cohorts, you could very well be looking at fake installs and events. Fraud blocking prevents your data from being corrupted and provides you with the peace of mind that your active user analytics are reflective of real users. By blocking fraudulent clicks and installs, Interceptd prevents bad data from corrupting your app.

Inaccurate Financial Models & Ad Spend Efficiency: Without a fraud prevention tool in place, you are wasting marketing dollars by paying to acquire fake users. This directly inflates your user acquisition costs, which impacts your bottom line. Imagine an environment where you can safely test new growth channels to discover new suppliers for your growth needs. You are likely to decrease your acquisition costs, directly impact your profit margin, and improve your lifetime value.

“The mobile app world has been aware of the growing fraud problem for quite some time,” says Lomit Patel, author of “Lean AI” and Vice President of Growth at IMVU.” “It’s time for companies to start measuring their losses related to fraud, which starts with transparency that independent fraud companies like Interceptd provide.”

Turning a blind eye to financial wastage by paying for fraudulent traffic is not a healthy growth strategy. The proof is in the savings. Inteceptd can help app companies in growth mode find an effective return on ad spend (EROAS) while protecting your budget, data, and financial models.