Paid app user acquisition in 2019 The definitive guide

Index

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What is user acquisition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Taking the first steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Goals, metrics and success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The importance of lifetime value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

User acquisition strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Types of ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Where do my ads go? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Five strategies to help you win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Creatives: The power of a persuasive message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Game, churn, retarget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Incentivization: It’s super effective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Cohorts: Improve your app user segmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Soft launch strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Three challenges, and how Adjust can help solve them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Lack of unified reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Ad fraud: A UA manager’s worst enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Introduction Without active user acquisition, it’s incredibly tough for businesses to find and convert new users.

User acquisition is a data-heavy practice that looks for trends and patterns that create growth. If you don't have a strategy, you’re guessing at what’s effective, and potentially missing out on opportunities to experiment, optimize and convert more users.

Competition for advertising is only increasing, so finding the means to boost app discovery has become imperative to success. With this guide from Adjust, the basics of paid user acquisition are explained, and we’ll show you some approaches you can take to reach new users effectively.

Read on to get started with the Paid User Acquisition Guide.

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What is user acquisition?User acquisition (known as UA) defines the process of

gaining new customers for your product.

Whether what you do to attract these users is in-

app, or on another platform or service, if you make

an attempt to actively promote your product, you're

engaged in user acquisition activities.

You can perform UA through a mixture of tactics, chan-

nels and so on.

A ‘media mix’ (the channels that make up your strategy)

might look something like this:

This isn't an entire strategy per se - there are many

directions you can pursue, with a combination that

depends on your strengths, the vertical your app is in

and how you experiment with and adapt your approach

as you go.

Your UA strategy could focus on paid media with

other elements involved, such as ASO and a PR push

at release. Or you might switch your focus to content

marketing. It all depends on your app, your resources

and your mission.

The example above includes a mix of organic and paid

strategies - while this guide focuses entirely on the

advertising you pay for, but that’s not to say we won’t

cover organic at some point in the future.

Earned Media Paid Media Owned Media

PR Advertising Social media

Reviews Paid influencer marketing Content marketing

Word-of-mouth Content syndication App Store

Search Website

App Store ads Cross-app promotion

Push notifications

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Taking the first steps

Before you begin acquiring new users, you need to have a clear understanding of your app’s value, a honed brand strategy and a set idea of the audiences you want to target - as well as the budget to reach them.

Let’s go over each of these elements to build out the beginnings of our UA campaign.

Brand strategy and value proposition

Some companies have them from their founding, but many don’t at all. So, what are we talking about here?

A brand strategy is a detailed document that covers what your company stands for, who needs your product and why.

Nailing this is difficult on the first try: you’re trying to find a message that resonates with your audience beyond the basis of a great product, and from the outset it’s hard to get this right.

Many marketers use brand positioning statements which define the value a brand brings to their target audience, explaining how it differs from the competition. This could look like:

“We want to stand out as the [app of choice] in [our competitive range] because we are [the best product in the category].”

There are more variations on the theme - but having a simple statement about the value you deliver to your customers is a fundamental step in the right direction.

This is just one of several exercises one can follow, but should give you an idea of the kinds of things you need to think about before diving into UA.

Personas

Bringing your audience to life in the form of personas is essential for two reasons, at least when it comes to UA.

First, personas allow you to craft the creatives that resonate with an audience. Trying to target a younger crowd but speak in a formal tone? That might not work so well - especially if you speak a different language altogether!

Personas also inform how you buy your media and how you segment your eventual, real audience. Without having defined them, you’ll find it much harder to perform the nitty-gritty of UA further down the line.

Defining an audience should be integrated long before the design process of your app, so the notes there should lead you to dealing with fairly solid marketing personas for your own use. If you don’t have these, spend time heavily researching as soon as possible, and return right here once you’re ready.

Budget

If there’s one must-have for paid UA, it’s money.

Securing a budget for your activities is a must - and requires adequate forecasting of how much you want to spend in the coming quarter and throughout the year.

Budgets will often be tied to how you set your goals and KPIs. So instead of talking about the budgeting process, which will differ from place to place, let’s talk more about the kind of KPIs you can track - which might help you to justify increasing your budget.

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The central aim of a UA campaign is - surprise - to acquire more users.

So, a key goal you’ll be tracking per campaign will likely be: how many users have I acquired?

Over time, it will become: have I acquired more users than I did last quarter?

However, modern UA doesn’t (or, shouldn’t) end its measurement there. You’ll also have to consider a host of other metrics in order not to ignore key points of value.

Goals, metrics and success

How do I know what’s important for me to track?

New marketers can often oversimplify their programs to focus on the number of installs. This leaves out critical insights that come from retention, revenue events, and so on.

How you set up your goals really depends on the type of app you have. For example, hyper-casual games tend to focus solely on user acquisition, hedging their bets on finding that ‘whale’ that will pay out for hundreds of in-app purchases. Meanwhile, some subscription-based services may look more at Lifetime Value, drawing in users with offers of a lower cost-of-entry, in order to gain subscribers.

Your app’s monetization model is guaranteed to vary from others - you may want to track in-app events, which could tell you if those users will subscribe (if you’re running a subscription application). Or you may only care about driving new users to your app cheaply, which means you’ll be tracking a range of cost metrics as well as user acquisition.

Measuring success is fiendishly difficult, and you should spend a lot of time mapping it before you really begin. For more ideas, take a look at our list of the most common metrics app marketers use to track their performance.

Click-through rate (CTR): This helps you understand if an ad creative is effective with target audiences.

Cost per install (CPI): This tracks the cost for generating an app install. Cost per acquisition (CPA): Here, we’re looking at how much it costs to acquire a user.

Average revenue per user (ARPU): This metric tracks how much revenue a user generates on average over a period of time.

Retention rate: A retention rate shows the percentage of users who are still using an app after a certain number of days after install.

Churn rate: You can also measure churn, which tells you the rate at which your users stop coming back to your app.

Uninstall: Related to churn, this metric tracks how many users uninstall your app completely - and when. Conversion rate: A conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete a desired action.

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The importance of lifetime valueAs we’ve mentioned, a modern UA manager shouldn't focus solely on quantity of installs.

Nowadays, app marketers need to make sure they’re bringing in users that can be monetized. That’s where lifetime value (LTV) comes in. LTV is a metric that tracks the value of a customer

over their engagement with an app: this generates a view on how your app performs over time.

Let’s take a look at how LTV adds value to your business.

What is lifetime value?

LTV is a prediction of the profit that’s attributed to an ongoing relationship between a customer and a product, uncovering how much a user is worth over time. By providing an estimate on how much a user is likely to spend, LTV can be used to set marketing budgets and ensure that companies focus their efforts on consumers that provide more value as time goes on.

How is lifetime value calculated?

LTV is often calculated by finding out the average churn and average spend of a user over a specific period to predict their overall spend.

A simple formula for this can be summarized as:

LTV = ARPU x 1/Churn

This calculates a user’s LTV by predicting how much money they’ll make in a set period (the ARPU, or Average Revenue Per User) and if they return (1/churn).

However, LTV is not one formula

Calculating Lifetime Value is harder than it looks, and our equation may not consider all of your needs. For instance, calculating LTV depends on the events that happen within your app: if your app’s method of monetization isn’t via user-generated revenue, then your method of tracking LTV will be different from a subscription-based app.

Lifetime value is a dynamic metric. As churn rates rise or fall, so does LTV - which makes it hard to predict.

It’s also challenging to attribute value to individual users: they must be grouped into cohorts that accurately reflect a particular type of behavior in order for marketers to apply their learnings to an upcoming ad campaign.

Taking these issues into account should make you wary of making simple LTV calculations. While it’s a vital metric, it needs a lot of thought and refining before you make decisions based on the data.

How can a marketer begin to calculate LTV accurately for their app?

A marketer needs to make sure that their in-app analytics correctly measure how much revenue users make over time, and how long they retain for. This means setting up a proper tracking infrastructure that ensures all revenue generating actions (like watching an ad or purchasing an in-app purchase) are recorded and assigned to users, as well as making sure that user retention is being calculated as accurately as possible.

Secondly, a marketer needs to group users into cohorts to provide a flexible picture of user LTV.

Finally, a marketer needs to decide how they will be calculating LTV. Practical constraints, including the accuracy of an app analytics setup, and the resource that can be committed to calculating it, will inevitably limit what a marketer can or can’t do.

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User acquisition strategiesPlanning over, it’s now time to begin acquiring new users.

As we’re focusing on how to do paid UA, we’ll skip over creating creatives (although this will be informed by the types of ads you want to pay for). Instead, we’ll look at ad formats and how to

begin buying media.

Types of adsSo, what are the current formats you can create?

Banners are one of the oldest forms of mobile ads, originating from the desktop web – where they continue to be a staple.

The logic behind these types of ads is simple: get your banner displayed, then wait for the users to click and convert.

In order to get those conversions, app marketers need to utilize quality graphics to make the banner appealing, with a clear and compelling call to action (or CTA).

Banners tend to be less invasive than other forms of advertising, and allow you to show some elements of your app.

However, they can be a little restrictive, as the space is relatively small when compared to other ads. Your ad might also suffer from the ever-increasing ‘banner blindness’ as users scroll by.

With banners, you’re often working at a low cost per install (CPI) but large impression base.

Interstitials ads are full-screen images or videos that cover the entire mobile screen.

Interstitials allow for more context for your message, clearer CTAs, and more creative content like videos, store locators, and others. They’re likely to be more visually compelling (depending on your creative) than other forms of static ads.

As for potential negatives, some users may not like the intrusiveness of a full-page image, and some users may click on your ad by mistake when trying to navigate away; increasing your clicks while lowering your conversation rate.

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Banner ads

Interstitial ads

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Expandable ads are a type of rich media ad that combine banner and interstitial ads into one.

Expandable ads are less intrusive than interstitials – at least initially – as users can choose whether to open and view the ad at their will.

Expandable ads can help overcome banner blindness. They also offer the ability to provide more information to users within the expansion.

As with interstitials, you can add video or other rich media to the pop-up.

Expandable ads offer marketers the ability to get clever with their CTAs, with essentially two opportunities: one to get users to open the ad, and another to lead them to click. As such, A/B testing can be a crucial step when creating such ads.

On the other hand, as with interstitials, expandable ads may frustrate inexperienced users who may not understand how to close them.

Native ads differ from banners and interstitial ads, as they seamlessly blend into the space you’re currently browsing in – adopting the look of their environment.

Interstitials are essentially full-page ads within an app. They typically freeze for a couple of seconds – with custom borders

and styling designed to mimic the game in which it appears.

While native ads come with a heftier price tag and may be more of a challenge to scale quickly, customized experiences often come with a big payoff in terms of downloads.

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Expandable ads

Native ads

Instead of a static text or image, you can create an ad which plays a video – a much longer but oftentimes more effective creative.

Video ads can be highly engaging and enable publishers to show off key app features. They have some of the highest CTR of all formats, and deliver relatively high LTV.

There are some simple rules to creating a video ad, mostly focused around simplicity. However, be mindful that some might not be expecting audio – which means such an ad needs to work hard visually to convey its message.

Video is both expensive to produce, and to place, so getting them right is even more important.

Video ads

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While practically gaming focused, playable ads offer users the chance to try before they buy, as it were.

Playable ads offer users interactive snippets of gameplay, allowing them a limited look at the app. At the end of their play time, there’s a call-to-action, which

usually prompts users to download the full experience.

Playable ads can be used to effectively reduce app uninstall rates and improve retention rates since users know what to expect from the app when they try them out.

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Playable ads

Where do my ads go?

Now that we have a list of ad types, it’s time we looked at how to get them advertised.

From in-app advertising to the web (and everything in between), you can purchase ads in many different places. It’s up to you to think about where you want to appear – though testing each source will give you an idea of the kinds of successes you’ll find. Optimization essentially means spending more on those channels, with improved creatives to test.

When it comes to in-app ads, social networks are one of the main places to advertise. Platforms such as Facebook and Google offer services to buy ads – and these also extend to their own app stores (Apple also allows for App Store advertising). Moving on from these platforms, advertisers can also find placement through a broad range of inventory owned by other companies, known as ‘networks or 'partners’, who own digital ad space across the globe.

Working with networks allows you to buy space to place your ads in more places, potentially extending your reach, or finding users in a special area or niche.

You can then track all of this activity with an attribution provider – even if you only work with a single network .

Optimize your channels

Ongoing evaluation of the channels and networks within which you’re delegating spend (as well as focus) should change over time with optimization. Seeing which perform best, and attracting great users, is a point that could be overlooked among campaign calibrations, discussion, and finding out which channels may not be performing so well.

Focusing your spend could also be aided by tackling mobile ad fraud; it’s increasingly relevant to most campaigns to ensure fraud stays away from your dataset and your campaign spend, something our Fraud Prevention Suite could cover.

Other areas of waste could include undefined global spend, and channels not directly relevant to you. Spending time reducing losses, rather than chasing gains, could help much more than you expect.

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Five strategies to help you win

Creatives: The power of a persuasive message

Consistently building, testing and improving your creatives are a surefire method of gaining new users. After all, what the user sees is what counts, not the networks or the channels you pick.

Brands change over time, so react to the changes of recognition and success. The better a position you have, the more confident you can be in trying new tactics.

Adjust’s analytics can help you A/B test your creatives, using data to establish what works and what doesn’t. Even the smallest change can have a big impact on your campaign, from color changes to facial expressions of characters. Consistently reworking designs and investing in creativity can have big returns.

Game, churn, retarget

We’ve so far focused on bringing new users in - but what about those who’ve already left?

Rather than reach new customers who have never heard of your app, a retargeting campaign is designed to target those who are already much further down the funnel, to users who have already shown interest in your app.

They’re the users who’ve clicked on an ad, downloaded an app, but bounced a day after use. Or they’ve installed the app but have abandoned their purchase - failing to complete the conversion. Retargeting activities are aimed at bringing these users back. Depending on whether you want to drive volume (with banners) or engagement (with native ads), a retargeting campaign can segment customers (into what’s known as cohorts) which allow for retargeting, complete with personalized messaging.

The main reason to pursue a retargeting campaign together with an acquisition campaign is all down to LTV. It’s not only cheaper to retain already-interested

users than it is to acquire brand new ones - these users often have greater (sometimes exponentially greater) value over time. We’ve shown just how big that uplift can be in a blog post here .

Incentivization: It’s super effective

Rewarded ads come in many forms: incentivized downloads, temporarily-free installs, referral rewards… you name it. And all of these types of promotions can have massive viral impact on customer acquisition. However, the perfect storm involves a few conditions.

The campaign has to make it clear that the reward is a rare, one-time special treat. This is so a user doesn’t believe they can simply wait for the offer to come around again. Users who think they’ll get something for free by waiting it out aren’t necessarily what you’re aiming for. Temporary rewards also fuel a sense of urgency. The reward could be well-publicized in a burst campaign that has maximum impression reach.

The biggest positive to a reward-based campaign is that they can quickly give your app the power-up it needs to make it into the app store listings. Because so many users find apps just by browsing lists in the store, this can quickly compound your efforts.

Rewards are also opt-in, meaning that users are automatically more engaged than users who arrive via traditional ads. Combined with the relatively low cost to run, reward campaigns can easily be integrated into push notifications for a campaign that is unobtrusive and has viral potential.

The major challenge of reward-based UA strategy is that both Apple and Google have gotten wise to the game and have taken steps to limit the extent to which incentivized offers can affect your app’s rankings in the store.

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Some networks have found that moving away from pay-per-install and towards pay-per-engagement campaigns (when the advertiser only pays for a complete install + secondary in-app action) have reduced the risk of incurring penalties.

If you decide to move forward with a reward-based acquisition strategy, keep in mind that you’ll also need a plan in place for how to keep your new users engaged once they’ve arrived - one such tactic is via retargeting, which can also be tied to a highly effective incentivization strategy too.

Cohorts: Improve your app user seg-mentation

One of the most important things when it comes to retargeting, reattribution, and re-engagement is utilizing cohorts to the fullest. By segmenting users into different blocks, depending on what you want to identify, you’ll better reach the users you want with less spent on the users who don’t provide you with great ROI.

A cohort is a group of users who share a particular trait, pulled together over a set period of time. This trait can be to do with spend, behavior, or route to install (among many others). So, for instance, you could look solely at users who installed on Facebook, or users who made an in-app purchase on day one. Cohorting itself can become quite complicated unless it’s tied to improving a bigger metric, such as lowering acquisition cost or exploring the best channels which users come from. By performing an analysis of your segments, you’ll have a better understanding of what your app user acquisition strategy should look like.

Fortunately, Adjust’s Audience Builder makes the process of retargeting much simpler. With it, you can create user segments with ease, powered by Adjust’s data. Segments can be based on user attributes, as well as events triggered by your app users within any timeframe, country, or OS. Then, only the data you want to send is transferred to retargeting partners, which you can download at any time.

Soft launch strategies

Soft launches are a tactic that allow marketers to test the waters without diving in. User acquisition, along with a host of other features, can be tried, tested and changed to fit with what works, and reduces the likelihood of failure at launch.

Limiting yourself to a single release can potentially reduce your app’s potential, as it could become hidden under the myriad of applications and the confusion of app stores. Without a significant budget and a strong focus on the day after a user installs, your app could fail to make an impression.

Soft launches are a great way of putting theory to the test by gauging your creation without putting everything on the line. But what are soft launches, and how can they help you take some of the sting out of day one hazards, and help ensure success on release to the markets that matter to you?

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What’s the point of a soft launch?

Testing is an essential part of decision making: it’s no longer a question of guessing how the market will take to your product, but instead trialing it before the big launch.

The app market is saturated; and it’s hard for new developers to break through. So how can a new player reach an audience, in spite of the competition? Defining a user base who’d be the most receptive to your application would be a great start, and though user personas must be tied into this, a soft launch can help better define real users, and show you the tactics which you could use to get their attention.

A soft launch is also a sure way to test the acquisition costs and lifetime value (LTV) of users across localities and demographics to those matching your ideal user. Soft launches provide feedback on all kinds of data points, including app performance (similar to a beta test), budget expectations, what users like and what they don’t.

What is a soft launch?

A soft launch is like taking a half-step, where you release an application in a smaller market before going worldwide (or to your target marketplace). For instance, you could make your app available in the UK before the US, or Austria before Germany, and so on. This means that you’re able to see how users take to an app, and how it performs on a smaller scale, before going any further.

What are the goals of a soft launch?

The goals of a soft launch are:

• To gather data on user behavior• To define success criteria• To find out which kinds of promotion are effective• To learn enough to repeatedly optimize with each new

launch

Planning: The blueprint of soft launch success

Before launch, you need to decide:

• How many users you need to acquire in order to gain meaningful data

• The types of users you want to target• The length of time you expect a soft launch to last• Your budget per launch, and the percentage it makes

up of your total acquisition marketing expenditure

These numbers will fluctuate depending on launch, but could be narrowed over time. Budget, particularly, has a lot to do with locality. However, it’s vital that each launch has these adequately forecasted in order to tell when it’s time to move on to the next one.

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How to track a soft launch

So, what should be looked at immediately after upload?

• How is onboarding? Many users could be dropping off due to confusion, or fiddly sign-up forms. How long does it take before a player arrives at your main offering? How much needs to be explained before someone really engages? What could be optimized?

• What does retention look like, by event? For example, do people leave when they begin running out of coins or weapons? What percentage of users complete a purchase? Which features aren’t they using?

• Take a look at your monetization model. Critically, a soft launch can help you find the right balance between your monetization and retention efforts.

• What are people saying about your app? Have you caused a stir?

The optimal time frame for a soft launch is between two to three months. This should be enough time to acquire an audience of a necessary size and analyze it to find some insights.

How to measure outcomes of a soft launch

We’ve already covered this when planning, but to remind you, here’s what you should be looking out for:

• User acquisition• New user acquisition cost (known as cost per install)• Organic growth• User engagement• Retention rate• Sessions per user• Time per session• Time per user

Although you may not want to acknowledge it, a soft launch will validate your product or show that it isn’t quite ready for the market. If your app receives low interest or engagement, you can then decide what needs to be improved, or whether it’s necessary to begin an entirely new project. Even large successful studios have been known to abandon projects due to poor performance during soft launch - for some, it’s their business model to create several, and keep only the best.

In the best case scenario, your app will receive validation upon its soft launch. This then will justify your commitment to the project, and you can continue to give it the time and resources it requires to grow.

What to do afterwards

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Three challenges, and how Adjustcan help solve them

Lack of unified reporting

Having your attribution reports spread out across networks can be, simply put, quite a hassle when it comes to putting them together.

This is where an attribution provider comes in.

Using a mobile measurement partner (MMP) like Adjust means that all your reports are unified in one place. Even if you’re running many campaigns on just two channels, we’ll be able to show you the data.

Furthermore, our data is unbiased. As a third-party data platform, we need to make sure there’s no influence on the numbers, either higher or lower. Self-reporting is, in some cases, not bound by the same rules.

Automation

One challenge which Adjust is committed to solving is campaign automation.

That is, to have all channels managed in one place, in an automated, performance-driven way.

Earlier we talked about where user acquisition happens - spread out across a number of platforms. If you want to buy ads on Facebook, you have to navigate to Facebook Ads Manager. Want Google’s reach? You’ll have to use Google Ads and UAC. And so on, for each and every network.

Such a way of working is fatiguing, repetitive and should be made much simpler. Fortunately, Adjust are coming up with an industry-first solution.

Acquired.io: A new way to manage campaignsAcquired.io solves the problem of manual work when it comes to channel management, ad operation and budget allocation for UA managers.

It does so by unifying all these platforms into one single dashboard. This means that rather than going from place to place, optimizing bids separately, a UA manager can work in one dashboard, saving an abundance of time.

The solution also adds the ability to make adjustments expressible as simple rules that a machine can take care of, freeing the UA manager to work on more creative problems.

For now, the integration is ongoing. But an announcement will go live on our blog as soon as the product is ready to launch.

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Ad fraud: A UA manager’s worst enemy

Ad fraud is a hidden nemesis of every new UA manager - you may not know it, but it will certainly affect how you work. Our Fraud Prevention Suite currently rejects around one million fraudulent installs every day, and almost all of your campaigns will certainly be faced with this problem.

We strongly believe that fraud should be every User Acquisition manager’s priority. So what is ad fraud, and how does it affect you?

Ad fraud, simplified

Mobile ad fraud describes the actions that fraudsters commit to siphon off advertisers’ budget by exploiting mobile advertising technology.

There’s a variety of tools at a fraudster’s disposal to do this, and each continually evolves. If one method is blocked, new ones will sprout in its place. The most common type of ad fraud is Click Injection (accounting for 47% of all rejected attributions), followed by SDK Spoofing and Click Spam (24% respectively), but these numbers change frequently. These terms might seem alien, but you can find proper definitions for each in our Expert’s Guide to Fraud .

Regardless, fraud has a few effects. The first is that it’ll simply steal your campaign budget - either claiming fake installs as real, or intercepting organic users and claiming those as coming from a paid source. However fraudsters do it, your campaigns are lost. This has two additional knock-on issues.

It’s not just your campaign budget that’s stolen - your ability to reach real users is also affected. If only 80% of your campaign is shown to real users, and the rest to bots, you’ve received a lessened output.

Furthermore, you’re now making decisions based on damaged data - as both in-app metrics and campaign performance are tarnished by incorrect information.

What fraud means for your metrics

Ad fraud doesn’t just steal from advertising budgets – it also interferes with user acquisition.

A network might look like it’s bringing tons of new installs, but there’s a chance that these attributions are fraudulent. If marketers can’t tell the difference between fake and real users, they’re likely to spend more money with the ‘good’ networks - opening themselves up to further fraud. Marketers get caught in a feedback loop, directing money away from those sources that bring them real, high-quality users. We also haven’t considered the domino effect fake users have on in-app activity and purchase data. Some marketers may not be too concerned about fake installs: in some instances, they may even view it as a good thing as their user acquisition numbers look great on paper. But other valuable metrics, such as retention and lifetime value, won’t match up, and that’ll become a serious problem down the line.

What’s the solution?

There are many approaches marketers can take to protect themselves. The most important step is the first: understanding the problem, and taking fraud seriously. A clear process and internal point person needs to be set up, fast; especially for organizations where it’s not immediately clear with whom the responsibility lies.

User Acquisition managers are in the perfect position to look at the data, see where their metrics don’t add up, and then escalate the issue.

It’s also important to demand transparency from your partners on where exactly your ads are displayed. Fraudsters thrive off black box models, so mobile marketers need to evaluate who they partner with and ask them how they’re fighting ad fraud. It’s also a good idea to find out where and how exactly the ads are running.

Finally, if you’re with Adjust, activating the Fraud Prevention Suite will effectively stop fraud in its tracks. We have lots of resources on how it works, so take a look on our blog, or contact support or our sales team for more information.

From implementing your campaigns to users registering, purchasing and playing to win, Adjust provides you with the data to make informed decisions around user acquisition.

To find out more, contact us today and receive a demo of our attribution platform.

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