Install fraud
Incentivized traffic
Certain affiliates have been incentivizing installs by sharing their commissions with end users via benefits like rebates, social gaming credits, or donations to causes. When this incentivized traffic is unlabeled or mislabeled as non-incentivized traffic, it fraudulently collects a higher CPI payout than it’s actually worth as users coming from an incentivized download generally provides less long-term value to an advertiser.
How they do it
- Malicious publisher has registered for advertiser’s CPI campaign
- User navigates to malicious publisher’s site
- User is incentivized by malicious publisher site to download advertiser’s app, based on the promise of five extra lives in the app’s game
- Malicious publisher does not label traffic as incentivized
- User installs advertiser’s app
- Advertiser attributes credit to and pays malicious publisher as if the install was not incentivized, meaning malicious publisher received payment for more value than it actually delivered
