Mumbai: TUNE, the global leader in mobile marketing measurement today unveiled the results of a joint effort with Google Inc.that will fundamentally address a growing type of mobile app ad fraud known as click injection on Android.
Click injection fraud is the process by which a non-human actor, such as a bot or malware installed on a mobile device, attempts to steal attribution credit and advertising dollars for a genuine app install. This happens when scripts or bots inject fake ad clicks between the time a person downloads and first opens an app. It’s estimated that in 2017 $139B of all paid media advertising worldwide will go toward mobile advertising with an estimated $7.5B spent by marketers in the United States on mobile app install advertising. TUNE estimates that click injection accounts for 30-40 percent of all mobile app install fraud and costs marketers more than $1.2B annually.
To counter this growing issue, Google has recently launched a new App Install Referral API that enables partners like TUNE to significantly reduce click injection fraud in the app ecosystem. TUNE is one of the mobile measurement solutions providers to integrate new Google Play data that details the exact time an app download began, directly into the TUNE Marketing Console.
This newly released data from Google on app installs, coupled with TUNE’s leading app attribution analytics, captures initial app download time and all clicks or events that take place between app download and the initial open, enabling marketers to precisely measure and remove fraudulent app installs driven by click injection. Marketers who use TUNE to measure app installs on Google Play have a new tool capable of identifying and ultimately ending fraudulent click injection without impacting real customer downloads.
“Over the last two years, we built new tools for fighting mobile ad fraud by enabling marketers and ad partners to work together, and we now lead the industry with the most granular approach” said Peter Hamilton, Chief Executive Officer at TUNE. “What was still missing in this fight was the direct cooperation with the platforms themselves, which is why this step with Google is such a powerful one. This data connection with Google is exactly what the industry needs to completely stamp out the practice of fraudulent click injection which will immediately eradicate nearly a third of mobile ad fraud. We look forward to continued collaboration with the brilliant teams at Google to making marketing more accountable.”
This is a significant win for marketers and app developers alike who spend time and financial resources to drive people to download their apps on Google Play. Poor quality traffic and mobile app install fraud accounts for an estimated $7B in wasted marketing spend annually. Ending click injection ad fraud will improve the quality of customers that marketers acquire via the Google Play store.
