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.
