It’s long been established that fraud exists and infects non-organic traffic, but does it also exist in organic traffic?
Fraudsters are motivated by money. And non-organic activity (i.e. paid user acquisition ), offer payment for newly acquired users in the form of CPI; therefore, creating an incentive for legitimate media publishers to try and attract users to generate revenue. This also creates incentive for fraudsters attempting to take a slice of the action in not-so-legitimate means.
The higher the CPI rate and/or marketing budget is, the higher the incentive and likelihood is of fraud to appear.
So, the question remains, what incentive exists that encourages the existence of fraudulent app installs in organic traffic?
The incentive behind organic fraud
When discussing fraudulent organic installs, the discussion will almost exclusively surround fake organic users. While organic installs can still be hijacked in order to falsely claim attribution for them, the mere association of attribution credit (legitimate or not) will remove them from the organic fraud discussion.
When talking about organic activity, where there is no attribution to hijack, fake installs are the only one that can fit the bill, as fake users can exist in both organic and non-organic forms.
The only question is, why would they exist in organic form?
Fake users can either be created by a type of malicious software, or program, or by a mobile device farm. Both operation types are meant to continuously generate user accounts and devices out of thin air. A mobile device farm will do so by constantly refreshing device identifiers for real devices, whereas bots can simulate the devices altogether and simulate fake users.
To operate a successful fake user operation at scale, the operators will do everything possible to portray a false image of real-user behavior. This manipulation can be achieved either by device emulators or human operators.
To understand the reasoning behind creating fraudulent organic installs, we must first realize that it is very likely meant to “service” the fraudster’s greater cause as mentioned above.
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Device laundering
Fraudsters are no strangers to the online advertising landscape. More often than not they would even grow from within the industry itself. Their operation will come into existence once a loophole or weakness is identified for possible exploitation.
One possible scenario for creating fake organic users could be driven by the fraudster’s familiarity with anti-fraud solution functionality.
Some of the solutions in the market take into consideration the aspect of “new devices” in a media source’s traffic as part of their fraud identification parameters.
Fraudsters run numerous tests to try and reverse engineer detected algorithms. They’re also aware of the fact that the majority of anti-fraud solutions don’t analyze organic traffic under the misconception that fraud doesn’t exist there.
Referring to previous posts, a misconception on one end is an opportunity for the fraud operator.
By artificially generating fake organic users under newly created device IDs, the fraudster basically legitimizes that new device, as the device identifiers are now familiar to the anti-fraud algorithm and will not fall under the definition of a “new device” or a “new user”.
Remember, for the fraudster, money is not wasted, fake users cost almost nothing to generate (especially when the operation is functioning at scale). These organic users may not generate immediate CPI revenue for the fraudster, but will rather “sacrificially” in an effort to be recognized as a legitimate device/user for future fraudulent activities.
Complimentary growth
A well established reasoning in the world of user acquisition is that when a campaign is successful and non-organic installs grow in numbers, so do the numbers for organic installs.
As stated earlier, fraudsters are well aware of these beliefs and they aim to create a holistic experience that mimics a successful campaign.
This includes throwing fake organic users into the mix to complement the non-organic growth created by them.
These organic users offer double the value, as they not only contribute to the overall “real” feeling of the fraudster’s operation, but they can also be displayed as alleged proof for the fraud activity’s legitimacy should the operator be confronted with fraud claims from the advertiser.
While many tend to brush aside the possibility of organic fraud’s existence, AppsFlyer recorded a steady increase of over 37% in detected organic fraudulent installs over the past six months.
Product impact
Organic user misconceptions not only damage an app developer’s user acquisition efforts, but may also have a dramatic impact on the app’s functionality itself.
Organic users are widely considered to be an app’s best users, as users who were organically drawn to download and use the app on their own, without any ad to “convince” them of doing so. They really do want to use the app for whatever intention it was created.
This leads app developers to base the majority of their app optimization decisions on the behavioral data recorded from this set of users. These optimizations can range from how the app is presented, to its user experience, ending with its core offering and functionality.
Keeping an open eye
Fraudulent activity is very likely to exist at any point where money can be made.
The assumption that fraud doesn’t exist is a considerable first step in confirming its current or future existence
AppsFlyer Protect360 anti-fraud solution will now also show where fraudulent activity exists in our advertisers’ organic installs. This is yet another innovative step in our ongoing effort to leave nothing to chance in the continuous battle against fraud in our ecosystem.
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