Networks join forces with Kochava to fight mobile ad fraud
SANDPOINT, Idaho, June 7, 2017— Kochava (www.kochava.com), an industry leader providing holistic measurement solutions for connected devices, is offering their fraud abatement toolset, Fraud Console, to ad networks, giving them the same access as marketers in fighting mobile ad fraud.
Marketers have been touting the benefits of the Kochava Fraud Console for the ability to rid fraudulent traffic from their ad campaigns. The fraud abatement suite has been saving them time and money, while ensuring that campaigns are clean of fraud, through the use of 11 different real-time reports.
Fraud Console a game changer for ad transactions
The Fraud Console has changed the way business is done between marketers and networks. In the recent past, fraudulent activity could only be detected post-campaign. Marketers’ only remedy was to negotiate make-goods with partner networks and hope for consensus. Using these tools, marketers can now identify illegitimate traffic during a campaign flight and before paying for it.
For MobilityWare, the company behind mobile games such as Solitaire, the latest toolset has become part of their regular campaign analyses. Through the Fraud Console, they’ve detected an exorbitant click volume that far outweighs the install rate, which was stealing attribution from rightful networks.
“We were getting hit with extra costs from having such a high click volume, and very few of those resulted in valid installs,” said Issei Shimizu, Senior Manager of User Acquisition for MobilityWare. “The Fraud Console shows us not just the data abnormalities in our campaign traffic but also where that activity is coming from.”
A month-long analysis of MobilityWare’s campaigns using the Fraud Console showed that approximately 5% of their total installs were from blocklisted sites. Of those, 80% were organic.
“Using the Fraud Console has saved us thousands per month from falsely attributed installs,” Shimizu said. “It assures us that we’re paying for the right traffic and networks that truly won the installs.”
Proactive tools to filter fraudulent traffic
Marketers are just beginning to explore the benefits of the Fraud Console, which includes a customizable Global Fraud Blocklist. The Blocklist excludes known fraudulent entities recognized by the Kochava algorithms that have surpassed a certain threshold. Use of Traffic Verifier allows marketers to determine how to attribute unverified traffic.
“The Kochava fraud reports have been invaluable in assessing partners and have even provided the solid evidence necessary to secure significant refunds for bad traffic. Now, with Traffic Verification and the Global Fraud Blocklist, we have two great front-end tools to help avoid the issue altogether,” said Kevin Grimes, Ad Operations Manager, DoubleDown Interactive.
Networks see the same data points as advertisers
Marketers’ success with the Fraud Console has led Kochava to provide access to networks too. Until now, marketers have had the advantage of detecting fraud in their campaigns, but this came at the expense of networks, frequently having already paid their sources for inventory while upholding any agreed upon make-goods with the marketer. The tools have been singling networks out for carrying fraudulent traffic without they themselves being aware of it.
The first ad networks to use the Fraud Console include FeedMob, Taptica, and Yeahmobi.
“Kochava is our long-trusted partner, and we have been working closely together to advance the mobile industry and fight against fraud,” said Galia Reichenstein, Taptica’s General Manager, US. “The Kochava Fraud Console gives us a shared platform with our advertisers to look at the same data points in real time and make smarter decisions. We are thrilled with the new console—it intuitively harnesses extensive data points, allowing for easy analyzation that takes our mobile campaigns to a new level.”
The growth of mobile ad fraud has made fraud abatement tools a necessity. Without the proper tools, marketers and networks will always be suspicious of the validity of their traffic.
“The ongoing fight against advertising fraud is something we take very seriously,” said Piyush Shah, CPO of InMobi. “The Kochava Fraud Console fits very nicely into our fraud prevention measures to provide actionable insights to aid our efforts in identifying malicious fraudsters and providing our global advertisers with fraud-free campaigns.”
“What matters to marketers matters to us, too,” said Daisy Wu, VP of International Business for Yeahmobi. “The Fraud Console is helping us detect illegitimate publishers that we can block moving forward.”
Fraud Console flags abnormal data
The Fraud Console is a powerful suite that allows customers to exclude fraudulent activity during their campaigns. The Fraud Console reports flag abnormal and potentially fraudulent activity pulled from a network’s traffic for review. The reports include sites and device IDs with high click volumes, discrepancies in app launch times or locations, ad stacking and unverified app store installs and receipts, among other common fraudulent tactics.
“The Kochava algorithms scan the breadth of Kochava accounts. Our system records and passes billions of data points and recognizes when abnormal activity fits the definition for fraud and flags that data for review. This is where customers can take advantage of the learnings of other accounts across the ecosystem,” said Charles Manning, CEO of Kochava.
Through the Fraud Console, networks earn marketers’ trust and also reduce time and money spent on make-goods and chargebacks by using fraud abatement tools.
“We pride ourselves at FeedMob in having the ability to use our data and first-party tools to detect and mitigate fraud, but we know that fraud is ever-evolving. Fraudsters make money by hopping from one network to another and at the end of the day everyone in mobile ad tech suffers,” said Sarah Hawley, Co-Founder and COO of FeedMob. “We value our partnership with the Kochava Fraud Console as it has the ability to take learnings from other networks that we would never have access to and protect us from having major issues with both clients and publishers.”
Mobile ad fraud is an industry-wide problem, but the more businesses that fight it, the more transparent and trustworthy the ecosystem becomes. With the Fraud Console, Kochava continues to innovate in developing tools that give the industry the ability to have transparent transactions and control over their traffic.
“The Fraud Console creates a valuable, neutral transaction space for both marketers and networks. Everybody wants a fair playing ground,” Manning said.
