Aastha Johri

Imagine that you onboard affiliates to market your newly launched app. They commit performance, and you start seeing thousands of new installs overnight. You’re at peace that you’re getting a good return out of your marketing investments.   But within a few days, the users start uninstalling your app, engagement drops to near zero and you’re at the same spot where you were on Day 1. Are you thinking what went wrong?   The answer could lie in Incent walls.   A deceptive method used by affiliates to deceive advertisers into thinking their app campaigns are performing. Here users install apps only to earn rewards, not because they genuinely care about the app itself. While this tactic might appear to boost performance metrics, it creates a dangerous illusion of success, leaving advertisers with inflated numbers but little real value.  In this blog, we’ll uncover the risks of incent fraud, how fraudsters manipulate soft KPIs using incentivized traffic, and, most importantly, how advertisers can protect themselves from wasted budgets and misleading campaign results.  What Are Incent Walls? Incent walls are digital platforms that reward users with in-game currency, discounts, or other perks in exchange for installing apps or completing designated tasks. These platforms are commonly found in gaming, survey, and reward-based applications.  At first glance, incentivized traffic might seem like an easy way to boost app installs. However, for advertisers aiming to acquire high-quality users who engage with their app, this method poses several serious risks.  The Risks of Incent Traffic for Advertisers 1. Low-Quality Users: The Engagement Mirage Users who install apps through incent walls are not genuinely interested in the app’s purpose. Their primary goal is to claim a reward, which means they rarely interact meaningfully with the app. This results in:  Poor user retention – Users abandon the app after meeting the required conditions. Artificially inflated metrics – Install numbers rise, but true engagement remains low. Skewed data – Advertisers may misinterpret the success of a campaign, thinking they are reaching a relevant audience when they are not. 2. High Uninstall Rates: A Costly Cycle Since incentivized users have no real interest in the app, they often uninstall it as soon as they receive their reward. This leads to:  Increased churn rates – Making it harder to build a stable user base. Wasted ad spend – Marketers pay for installs that offer no long-term value. Negative app store rankings – High uninstall rates can lower an app’s ranking in stores, affecting organic discoverability. 3. Fraudsters Manipulating Soft KPI Events Incent traffic often gets blended with organic or paid traffic to manipulate key performance indicators (KPIs). Fraudsters use this technique to:  Create a false sense of campaign success – Users complete basic actions like sign-ups or tutorial completions but never become engaged customers. Drain advertising budgets – Advertisers spend on user acquisition without any long-term return. Make detection harder – By mixing incent traffic with legitimate sources, it becomes challenging to separate real user behavior from artificially boosted metrics. How to Detect Apps Running on Incent Walls Warning Signs of Incent Traffic: Unusual Traffic Spikes – If installs surge from specific sources within a short time frame, it could indicate incentivized installs. Low Engagement Rates – Users acquired through incent walls often fail to complete meaningful in-app actions beyond the reward requirement. High Uninstall Rates – A sudden drop-off in user retention post-installation is a strong red flag. Suspicious Sources – If the traffic originates from reward-based apps, it is essential to scrutinize it further. Real-World Case Studies: Spotting Incent-Driven Fraud Sample 1: Telecom Provider’s Inflated Installs A popular telecom provider ran a campaign unknowingly on an incent app. Users were directed to install the app through a shared link and complete certain steps to earn over 3,000 coins. While installs skyrocketed, actual customer engagement remained minimal.  Sample 2: Banking App’s Misleading Growth A campaign for a top-tier banking app was identified on an incent platform. Users followed a shared link, installed the app, and completed a simple action to claim rewards. The result? A surge in installs but little to no account activations or transactions.  These cases highlight how incentivized traffic can inflate metrics while delivering no real business impact.  How Advertisers Can Protect Themselves 1. Implement Advanced Fraud Detection Tools Advertisers can combat incent-driven fraud by leveraging ad fraud detection solutions like mFilterIt, which provides:  Real-time monitoring – Identifies traffic anomalies that signal fraudulent activity. User engagement analysis – Distinguishes between genuine and incent-driven users. Source validation – Ensures traffic quality by filtering out incent-originated installs. 2. Focus on Quality Over Quantity Instead of chasing high install numbers, advertisers should prioritize user intent and engagement. Strategies include:  Running targeted ad campaigns that attract relevant users. Optimizing app store listings to improve organic discovery. Monitoring post-install behavior to measure genuine engagement. Final Thoughts: Protecting Your Ad Budget While incent walls may appear to offer a quick boost in installs, they ultimately lead to poor-quality traffic, budget wastage, and skewed campaign analytics. By proactively identifying and blocking incent-driven installs with fraud detection tools, advertisers can ensure their marketing efforts drive real business value.  Investing in genuine, high-intent users will always yield better long-term success than chasing artificial growth through incent traffic. Brands that prioritize transparency and authenticity in their marketing will build stronger customer relationships and maximize their return on investment.  Ready to stop wasting budget on empty installs and start acquiring real, high-quality users?Connect with mFilterIt today to safeguard your app campaigns from incent-driven fraud and maximize true performance.

Ad fraud has become the most talked about thing in the digital ecosystem in the last one decade. Over the years it has become sophisticated and led to huge losses for the advertisers. According to the last measured stats, the potential loss due to ad fraud in 2024 will be around $100 billion.   And if marketers who are running impression campaigns are thinking that ad fraud is not impacting their ad campaigns, take a look at your campaign data.   If you see unusual traffic from sources outside your targeted area, there is one red flag for you to check. And like this, there are many more.   Impression validation is as crucial as validation of other hard key performance metrics. It helps advertisers get transparency at the beginning stage of the ad campaign and help them stop it at the root before it impacts the entire campaign, especially metrics like installs and events (like subscription, or first transaction) where the cost is higher.   Let’s understand in detail how impression fraud validation is essential for app marketers and how MMP’s are hiding the actual impact of fraudulent impressions.   MMP’s are hiding the full picture from you   Mobile Measurement platforms or MMPs often play a significant role in app marketing. They help the advertisers track the last click attribution of their ad campaigns and track app performance. There are a few MMPs who also provide ad fraud detection tool bundled with their attribution services. However, ad verification by MMPs have their own limitations.   -Focus on Attribution, Not Validation: Their core services are limited to attribution and not validation. MMPs get paid on the number of attributions made and when they detect fraud on these attributed sources, it directly impacts their revenue creating a conflict of interest. Therefore, they detect only 10-12% of the fraud and the rest of the fraudulent traffic remains undetected.  -Limited Scope of Fraud detection: The MMP’s don’t have the capability of doing deeper checks. They can detect fraudulent traffic based on basic checks and they often miss sophisticated fraud techniques.   -Lack of Real-Time Fraud Insights: The attribution platforms cannot provide real-time fraud insights to advertisers. Their usual timeline for generating ad fraud reports is D+7, where if the fraud is detected by the 20th, the advertisers will receive the report by 28th of the month. This further delays the preventative measures which the advertiser could have taken against these fraudulent sources.   Why App Advertisers Need to Look for an Advanced Ad Fraud Solution?   In comparison to the fraud detection done by MMPs, mFilterIt’s Valid8 solution uses a more holistic approach against the sophisticated fraud techniques. Some of the differentiating factors which will help you realize the difference:   -Transparency on real % of fraud: When MMPs detect less % of ad fraud, the advertisers are not aware of the actual number of fraudulent traffic sources. This further impacts the efficiency of the ad campaigns, and the advertisers end up losing money twice. First, on the invalid traffic interacting with their ads before validation, and second when the actual number is not reported by MMPs. With mFilterIt, brands can transparency at the source-level and identify which traffic sources are skewing the metrics.  -Provides real-time analytics and blocking: Using mFilterIt’s ad fraud detection solution, the advertisers can get real-time analysis of the fraudulent traffic and block them in real-time. This helps advertisers to save money on both invalid traffic on ads and attribution cost for these traffic sources to MMPs.   -Give full funnel protection: Unlike the MMPs, our ad fraud verification tool protects the campaign holistically. Our full-funnel coverage not just validates traffic at impression-level, but also at the install and event level to reduce the impact of fraud. This ensures that cleaner traffic reaches the end-of-the-funnel, resulting in a better conversion rate.   A Real Case  Here is a real case of a brand which was running an install campaign. By partnering with mFilterIt the brand was able to identify the impact of invalid traffic at the impression level. Upon further analysis we found two specific reasons for invalid traffic – impression spamming and traffic coming from incorrect region. We identified the cause and started blocking invalid traffic which resulted in an increase in organic traffic at the install level.    Takeaway  Ad fraud is evolving, and it can easily bypass the basic checks by MMPs. For advanced fraud techniques, you need an advanced ad fraud detection tool in your tech stack. While looking for an ad fraud verification vendor for your app campaigns, don’t believe the surface level reports and checks. It is time to ask for transparency and ensure that your entire ad campaign is protected, thereby your ads are seen by a genuine audience resulting in better conversions.   To get details on how we do it, get in touch with our experts