Hidden App Traffic Exposed with FouAnalytics

Most digital ad spend on mobile runs on mobile apps rather than mobile web. It's easier to navigate the internet on apps and people spend the most time with big social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, etc. There are very few legitimate apps being monetized through programmatic. When programmatic is left to run on apps, we see that spend go to crappy games with too many ads, utility apps like alarm clocks manufacturing impressions all night while you sleep, or completely fake apps. Many experienced buyers know this and will completely block mobile apps in their campaigns or only allow their campaigns to serve on a specific inclusion list of legitimate apps.

Apps Loading Websites

Even when you block your campaigns from running on apps you may still see apps in your FouAnalytics dashboard. This is because apps can load websites.

When you click a link on Facebook it opens a browser within the Facebook app and then that site may serve display ads. This is a legitimate practice and it's useful for Facebook because it keeps the user within the Facebook app. The same thing happens in apps like Flipboard, Reddit, Pinterest, etc. News apps may also load their website in their app so if the entities are related (i.e. Fox News app opening the Fox News website) then this is not suspicious. Of course with every legitimate practice, fraudsters will find a way to use it for their gain.

Generating fake traffic to a website

Flashlights, alarm clocks and keyboards have no reason to be loading a webpage, do they? These apps use hidden webview browsers to load webpages all night while the human is sleeping and deliver fake traffic. They are part of vast botnets used to "fulfill" traffic that shady publishers purchase and get around fraud detection. You don't see these apps in your placement reports because the ad was served on the website that bought the shady traffic. In order to remove them from your campaign you have to block the website not the app. Further, legacy verification companies don't catch this kind of fraud because the app is real and it is installed on a real device. The human has no idea this even happened and the fraudsters easily trick the verification companies.

Getting into Audiences

When we measure on-site we can see apps loading the website. Bots use apps to load publisher websites to get cookies (like a medical journal site to be part of a doctor audience). We know this is happening because they keep coming back every 30 days to refresh cookies. These bots can now earn higher CPMs being part of the audiences advertisers want to reach. That's how your doctor ads show up on crappy ab workout and wallpaper apps. It's not the doctor using the app its the bot pretending to be a doctor in the app.

Incentivized traffic

Gaming apps sometimes load websites. Humans don't naturally use gaming apps as web browsers, so in this case the human playing the game wants to get more points, coins, etc. and they are incentivized to load a website to get their reward. In many cases this is through search partner networks that drive incentivized clicks to paid search advertisements for high value keywords like dental implants and legal services. But publishers have also been caught driving incentivized traffic to their site to read articles (and load display ads). Even though these ads are served to a human on a real device, it's not particularly valuable when the user has no intent to buy the services or engage with the content.

So What?

FouAnalytics shows you each instance of apps loading websites. While there are legitimate cases of apps loading websites, FouAnalytics helps you use your judgement to weed out the fraudulent ones. Legacy verification platforms do not detect this form of fraud, so you'll be able to make smarter inventory decisions with FouAnalytics. Setting up requires only a few minutes to paste a tag into your adserver/dsp or on your website. Let me know if I can help you get started.