Singapore tops list of app install fraud rates in Asia

Advertisers around the world lose as much as $700 to $800 million annually to mobile app fraud, according to a new global study.

The State of Mobile Fraud Q1 2018 report by mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform AppsFlyer put Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong at the top of the list for app install fraud rates in Asia.

According to the report, mobile app marketers were exposed to 30% more fraud compared to the 2017 quarterly average.

Indeed, the share of fraudulent installs has also grown by 15% tainting 11.5 percent of all marketing-driven installs, with shopping, gaming, finance and travel apps the hardest hit – shopping apps is the most heavily hit vertical with $275 million exposed.

The report concluded that bots are now the most dangerous threat, having replaced device farms as the most popular form of attack responsible for over 30% of fraudulent installs. A previous AppsFlyer study on “Device ID Reset” fraud had blamed device farms for costing advertisers up to $1.3 billion annually.

And while the Android platform is more vulnerable to fraud, the iOS platform is also a target. Of course, the greater difficulty of device fraud on iOS means that fraudsters are resorting mainly to click flood methods. However, Android rates are higher for all other categories of fraud.

While new protective measures are introduced, fraudsters are also adapting their techniques. The result is a slew of new measures, and new countermeasures in yet another game of cat and mouse. Ultimately, mobile marketing fraud has become a high stakes arms race as both sides leverage increasingly sophisticated methods.