Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Detecting mobile app CPI frauds

Most CPI campaign work quite nicely. However, I saw this video which claim major click-frauds on Facebook ads from click-farms in specific countries. I've decided to re-check my last CPI campaign.

How I checked: by country, check the average session duration during the campaign. Filter only countries with average session duration less than 50% of the average.

Finding: At least 2 of the top 10 countries in the campaign clearly had a CPI fraud. The average session duration was less than 50% of the average, the CTR was x2-x4. Next time I'll look for it in real time. I've compared it with the data after the campaign & the session duration went back to normal.

Waste of money.

Bottom line: How I will search for ad frauds, at country level:
  1. Significantly low (or high) session duration
  2. Significantly high ad CTR rate