Online ad fraud needs to be treated as seriously as other financial crimes if organizations want to combat it, according to a security firm whose research alleged millions of dollars were being bilked through a Russian developer exploiting Twitter’s ad marketplace.
Earlier this month Fredericton-based Sentrant published a 25-page report that looked at a specific case involving more than 200 Android apps it said were loading “invisible” ads in the background and generating $250,000 of of phony advertising results each day.
Sentrant used data provided from Addictive Mobility to look at ads running across Twitter’s MoPub network and pointed the finger at Academ Media, which makes free games such as Frozen Flame, among others.
“Upon deeper investigation, Sentrant discovered that the apps on these install lists were actually developed by shell companies associated with Academ Media,” the report said. “Though the publishers of these apps may appear to be unrelated to Academ Media, sections of their app codes are identical to that of Academ Media apps.”
Spokespeople for Academ Media strongly denied the allegations in an interview with the Financial Times and claimed it had been hacked. In the weeks since the research was published, however, Google removed the apps from Google Play.
“While we don’t comment on specific apps, we can confirm that our Google Play policies are designed to provide a great experience for users and developers. That’s why we remove apps from Google Play that violate those policies,” Google said in a statement published on the International Business Times and elsewhere.
Sentrant co-founder and CTO Ehsan Mokhtari told Marketing the research was a byproduct of its own efforts to create an in-app monitoring tool to prevent or reduce the risk of online and mobile ad fraud. That product, most likely to be monetized on a CPM basis, is intended to hit the market in the next six to eight months, he said.
“The whole industry needs to put more effort into this to create the awareness for the advertisers,” he said. “All of this money is lost due to fraud, and besides the money that’s lost, there is also the loss of opportunity because they’re not reaching the audience they hoped to reach.”
While companies like Google and Twitter have teams to verify app quality, they might not always be able to detect potential fraud when they only monitor apps for a limited time, he added. That’s why they may need to develop more sophisticated tools or look to third parties to do more than offer static analysis.
Besides the obvious impact to advertisers, Mokhtari said the proceeds of ad fraud may simply be used in part to re-invest in technologies that make the problem even worse, though there needs to be more research to understand how such organizations operate.
“God only knows what this money is being used for afterwards,” he said.
Besides Sentrant, others are jumping into the market for tools to assist with reducing or mitigating ad fraud. Mobile analytics company Adjust recently previewed a tool to assist with attribution of installs and campaigns.
