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Mobile app acquisition is a dynamic and challenging landscape, constantly evolving with new trends and threats. One of the biggest hurdles we see advertisers face is fraud, which can significantly impact campaign performance and ROI. Singular’s customizable fraud rules can help.
We sometimes hear 2 entirely contradictory things from customers:
- Singular fraud rules can be overly restrictive
- Singular’s fraud rules are not strict enough
This highlights a fundamental challenge in our industry: there is no “one size fits all” approach to fraud detection.
You can have very strict fraud rules but potentially miss out on accurately attributing legitimate installs and risk alienating networks who feel that they are being unfairly penalised. Alternatively, if your fraud rules are not strict enough, customers risk paying for installs which are actually organic. Or, customers could get legitimate installs from great ad networks cannibalized by the grey and black hat operators in our industry.
This is a massive challenge.
But it’s precisely why we’ve built Singular’s fraud rules the way we did.
And it’s also why Singular customers save up to 25% of their ad budgets and are twice as efficient at managing fraud than other marketers.
Flexibility is key for fraud rules
Singular has a very significant anti-fraud suite to protect our customers, with over 50 different fraud detection and prevention methods. But Singular’s fraud rules are also built to offer maximum flexibility.
That flexibility means you as a customer and advertiser can:
- Define your own risk tolerance
Set custom thresholds for suspicious activity, balancing fraud prevention with campaign reach - Prioritize specific fraud types that impact you most
Focus on the most critical threats to your campaigns, such as click fraud, install fraud, and fraudulent traffic sources - Set varying outcomes when we detect fraud
Sometimes it’s not appropriate to block everything … sometimes flagging potential fraud for further investigation is a better approach - Enable adjustable rules based on historical performance
Often the best approach is to allow advertisers to update their own fraud prevention measures depending on the level of fraud detected previously and where it occurred
This versatile approach allows you to customize how you want to treat fraud based on the ad partners you choose, the geos you’re operating in, and the risk levels that you’re comfortable with. It also lets you change settings on the fly when you see outcomes — either too much fraud or overly-aggressive limitations — that aren’t working for you.
Data-driven insights and transparency
To enable this level of transparency and control, it’s not enough to have a “black box” fraud tool which doesn’t give you as an advertiser full insight into what has been detected and why it’s been identified as fraud.
That’s why Singular’s fraud prevention tool and fraud rules offer all the insights you need:
- Real-time data and analytics
Now you can track fraud trends, identify suspicious patterns, and gain insights into campaign performance - Transparent reporting
This provides full transparency into the types of fraud detected, the impact on campaign metrics, and the effectiveness of fraud prevention measures - User-level analysis
Now you have the ability to accurately analyse fraud that’s been detected right down to the user level. And you can share this information with networks.
With these tools, a fraud discussion with an ad partner can move from a combative, challenging discussion with few clear goalposts to a constructive, collaborative chat with specific data points to illustrate problems and concerns.
In other words, now you can actually do something specific about fraud with your ad partners.
Singular’s fraud rules can block fraud before attribution occurs
Identifying fraud days or weeks after it happened is often unacceptable. What you ideally want is to be able to identify and block fraudulent activity before it’s attributed to a campaign. This proactive approach helps Singular customers get a 90% decrease in suspicious activity.
How?
Finding fraud before attribution helps you:
- Prevent wasted ad spend on fraudulent traffic
- Maintain campaign quality by ensuring that only legitimate users are acquired
- Improve the accuracy of campaign performance data by minimizing the impact of fraudulent installs
That’s why Singular’s fraud suite checks for quality and authenticity before attributing installs or other campaign objectives. Our goal is to maintain your data integrity.
What Singular’s flexible fraud rules mean for you
Most mobile marketers agree: effectively combating fraud is crucial for sustainable growth. The question is how to precisely achieve that.
It’s not necessarily about finding the vendor with the “best” predefined fraud rules. The critical factor lies in the quality and granularity of the data provided by the fraud tool and the flexibility with which you can apply that data via your personal fraud rules.
This data empowers advertisers to:
- Understand the specific types of fraud impacting their campaigns (e.g., click fraud, install fraud, bot traffic)
- Identify the sources and patterns of fraudulent activity
- Make informed decisions about adjusting their campaigns, modifying their fraud rules, and optimizing their overall fraud prevention strategy
By prioritizing data-driven insights and empowering advertisers with the knowledge to make informed decisions, fraud tools become invaluable assets in navigating the complexities of the mobile app acquisition landscape.
Singular’s fraud suite is, we think, your best option to ensure every ad dollar you spend goes towards incremental growth for your app and your company.
Interested in learning more?
We’d be happy to chat. Set up a meeting right here.
