Strategies for Winning More Mobile Subscribers: Eliminating Fraud at the Source

Price wars, ad fraud, churn rates, and increased competition are all part of the battle in the fight to win new subscribers. As demand increases, so does competition, with some underhanded tactics often going unnoticed.

With the mobile advertising market expected to reach $214.59 billion in 2025 according to Fortune Business Insights, it's no surprise that the industry is rife with ad exploitation. Behind the surge on spending, hides AI bots and invalid traffic (IVT). This rising ad fraud issue is eroding marketing performance and impacting ROI.

Through underhanded tactics and fraudulent clicks bad actors are inflating subscriber acquisition costs, faking installs, and misleading campaign metrics. Mobile systems are particularly vulnerable, as many operators haven’t yet fully optimised their security against ad fraud.

These security gaps have paved the way for sophisticated attacks on budgets. To maximise campaign efficiency and protect their budgets, it’s crucial that operators tackle this battle.

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Sophisticated mobile fraud on the rise

Marketing is becoming an increasingly integral part of the telecoms industry. Operators are being challenged to reduce customer churn and stand out from competitors. Customers expect relevant, highly personalised digital experiences to remain loyal to a brand.

A mobile operator in the Middle East saw that they were losing profits to invalid traffic and faced high-cost brand search due to its highly competitive environment. After deploying an ad fraud platform to target the source of the issue, they saw a 20% reduction in costs, a 27% reduction in IVT, and saved over $7000 in one month. This increased their ROI by 13x.

Marketing campaigns are costly, meaning mobile operators can’t afford to waste their ad spend. However, rises in ad fraud are siphoning away budgets at scale with operators none the wiser. Bad actors have multiple fraud tactics, including:

• Mobile App Install Attribution Stealing: Mobiles are frequently targeted for app install attribution stealing. Bad actors are falsely claiming credit for user installs that should be attributed to legitimate marketing partners. This is achieved with install farms, typically a network of people or devices creating fake profiles to imitate legitimate users. They will then quickly uninstall the app. Operators are then tricked into believing their app is getting authentic downloads and will pay out to bad actors unknowingly.

• SDK Spoofing: This is another popular tactic and involves sending fake app install signals to operators. Fraudsters can simulate real app installations by hacking ad networks, and budgets will be impacted as operators are paying for fake installs with no real engagement.

• Click Spamming: Through the use of AI-powered bots, bad actors can generate large volumes of fake clicks. Bots can convincingly mimic human behaviour, enough for systems to mistakenly identify their fraudulent clicks as a legitimate user. This drains budgets by driving up cost-per-click (CPC) rates despite no real engagement taking place.

The damage done to budgets doesn’t stop at paying the wrong source however, as ad fraud also misleads operators with inaccurate data. Influxes of fraudulent traffic make it incredibly difficult for operators to track the true performance of a campaign.

From a surface level a campaign will appear to be successful, but in reality, traffic has been artificially inflated by fraud with no meaningful conversions. Operators will then direct funds to underperforming campaigns in the future, further damaging budgets.

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Building obstacles for bad actors

Ad fraud isn’t going anywhere, so operators need to focus on strategies to shore up their defences against bad actors. Mobiles typically deploy legacy anti-fraud tools that don’t operate at the impression or click level. IVT such as bots can’t be identified by these, instead they blend in with the crowd of legitimate users to carry out attacks on budgets.

There are, however, tactics operators can utilise to protect themselves from fraud and ensure campaigns aren’t prevented from reaching their maximum potential:

• Monitoring Traffic:The first step to identifying fraud is for operators to take an active role in monitoring their traffic regularly. Fraudulent activity is detectable through key inconsistencies, such as a sudden spike in traffic or traffic from unusual locations. Suspiciously short user sessions and multiple installs from the same IP address could also be signs of potential bot activity. If operators watch out for these signs, they can quickly identify fraud and block it from harming ROI.

• Robust Identity Verification: Bad actors will create large volumes of fake accounts to carry out fraud. Stronger identity verification at sign-up will deter these accounts as bad actors won’t be able to provide enough detail to pass through the system. This will drastically cut down fraudulent traffic attempting to infiltrate a campaign.

• Setting Custom Verification Rules: Click spamming can rapidly deplete budgets as bad actors flood a campaign with fake clicks. Setting custom verification rules will prevent this by limiting the number of times a particular user can engage with or view an ad. If a fraudster clicks on an ad enough to reach the limit, they’ll be blocked from it, preventing them from further skewing metrics with fake clicks.
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Staying in the competition by combatting fraud

Competition between mobile operators is at all-time high, and they’re pulling out all the stops to win round a new audience. With such high investments being made into marketing, it’s only a matter of time until bad actors strike.

Mobile ad fraud is a persistent threat, but operators can fight back by arming themselves with the knowledge of how to spot it. By tackling fraud, operators can strengthen their customer acquisition models, protect their budgets and retain their competitive edge.

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Find the article at TheFastMode.

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