By Himanshu Nagrecha
Every company today is striving to consistently grow their customer base, gain a competitive edge, establish their brand, and improve sales and revenue. All of these things are possible with a mobile application, which also enables organisations to discover numerous prospects for growth and produce large income. This has been made possible by the growing number of smartphone users, of which there are currently 600 million in India, according to figures from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. As a result, the mobile app market has experienced phenomenal growth over the years, resulting in millions of users and significant income generation.
It is obvious that customers are spending more time online than ever before, and businesses are effectively pushing new content and advertisements to engage with their target audience. However, this practice has also drawn fraudulent participants who take part in illegal activities such as generating invalid traffic, or IVT. As a result, the integrity of advertising campaigns and the confidence of advertisers are undermined by unreliable traffic’s propensity to fraudulently inflate app metrics like ad impressions, clicks, and installs. Let us delve deep into how this unreliable traffic can potentially impact user acquisition and cost efficiency in the mobile app industry.
Implications of IVT
Invalid traffic (IVT) can impact the strategies and tactics employed by app developers and marketers to attract new users to their offerings. It can primarily affect key performance indicators (KPIs), including app downloads, user engagement, and ad impressions, which can result in erroneous data analysis and hasty decisions. Additionally, advertisers could optimise their campaigns based on the wrong data about user behaviour, which could result in inadequate outcomes, wasted money on ads, and low returns on investment.
The user experience of mobile apps may suffer as a result of this unwanted traffic. It can produce false clicks, installs, or engagements, which can result in irrelevant or annoying ads, phoney reviews, or falsely inflated rankings. As a result, it is more difficult to optimise an app, which hinders user acquisition efforts, user trust, app credibility, and all of the above. It is essential for app developers to put in place strong fraud detection and prevention methods, regularly monitor key performance metrics, and keep the traffic clean in an effort to lessen these effects.
Keeping the traffic clean
The best way to grow the installation numbers of the application is to protect the advertising initiatives from bots and fraudsters that tend to misattribute the installs. It can help marketers use their ad budget effectively to reach the right users with a high propensity to convert. In this regard, ad networks and app developers can make use of ad traffic verification tools that employ advanced algorithms to recognise and block fraudulent traffic in real time. These solutions can detect bots, click farms, and other fraudulent activities, preventing them from affecting ad performance and user engagement. By following a multifaceted and proactive approach, advertisers can maintain the integrity of mobile ad traffic and increase campaign efficiency.
Monitoring Marketing KPI
IVT is a persistent problem for mobile apps, as fraudsters are always getting more sophisticated with their strategies. Therefore, in order to effectively counteract it, advertisers must constantly check their analytics for any inconsistencies. In this regard, advertisers must regularly monitor key metrics such as conversion rates, retention rates, click-through rates (CTR), and more to identify any anomalies or sudden changes as they can reflect fraudulent activity. Additionally, in order to remain ahead of new risks, fraud prevention techniques must be continually reviewed and updated. Moreover, it is essential to examine user behaviour, and attribution data to spot any patterns or suspicious activities that can point to IVT and enable advertisers to act quickly.
Deploy sophisticated ad fraud prevention tools
Deploying ad fraud prevention tools can significantly aid in identifying and mitigating invalid traffic. These tools employ ML-based algorithms to detect and prevent fraudulent activities, protecting advertising campaigns from financial losses. These tools can analyse large amounts of traffic and identify anomalies in patterns, which can significantly indicate fraudulent activities. The ML-powered ad fraud protection for mobile apps stops sources of erroneous traffic from interacting with the ads, reducing the negative effects that bots and fraudsters have on revenue and operations. A number of advantages can be obtained by integrating the tool across mobile app marketing campaigns, including optimised ad budgets, increased user acquisition, and improved campaign effectiveness. Furthermore, it can also verify the legitimacy of app installation by examining app attribution data and cross-verifying the source of installation.
All things considered
A report by Deloitte states that India will have more than one billion smartphone users by 2026. It indicates that elevated growth in the mobile application industry is inevitable in the near future. However, with this growth, a significant threat of IVT persists that could harm the mobile app industry by undermining the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and eroding trust among stakeholders. In this era of probable recession, marketers must be cautious about every dime they spend on their campaigns. The need of the hour is to save the ad budget from going into the fraudster’s hands, apart from driving installations and increasing user acquisitions.
In a bid to negate the adverse effects of IVT, advertisers and brands should start by educating their teams to make informed decisions whenever they face this situation. After educating the departments, methods such as implementing stringent monitoring, leveraging ad traffic verification tools, and ensuring clean traffic can significantly reduce the impact of invalid traffic and lower ad budget waste.
Mobile user acquisition is a challenging concept to comprehend, particularly in the saturated market we have today. However, mobile app marketers can develop successful user acquisition tactics, encourage downloads, and propel their apps to the top of the app store with the correct information, resources, and ad fraud prevention tools at their disposal.
(This article is authored by Mr. Himanshu Nagrecha, Vice President of India & South Asia of TrafficGuard, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
