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Mobile games category is by far the leader in the number of downloads and app revenue. However, having such a vast - and lucrative - market without any bad actors involved is just too good to be true. While mobile games have long been a tidbit for fraudsters and had led the rankings of the most fraudulent app categories, in 2018 they passed this unfortunate lead to e-commerce apps. But does it mean that mobile app developers can now breathe a deep sigh of relief?
Today, we caught up with Łukasz Kwiecień, Head of Marketing Operations at Huuuge Games, to discuss how to achieve the greater number of downloads and stop mobile fraud from affecting app economy.
Huuuge Games flagman app Huuuge Casino became incredibly popular in the social casino genre. By attracting and retaining a large number of players, earlier last year the app worked its way up to the top-10 in its category.
“Reaching success is a million dollar question. There can be probably dozens of good answers, and most of them might be correct, but in my opinion, data is the key. Knowing what to look at and what and how to measure it and draw actionable conclusions from the findings is the key. There is less room for "gut feelings" and applying old learning to the ever-changing mobile landscape. All marketers need to look forward and predict.”
As is often the case, success and money attract those willing to steal them. Since the issue of mobile fraud has long been prevalent across the mobile advertising ecosystem, many app developers have no other choice but to come up with a set of proactive approaches to tackling it. As a Head of Marketing at the multi-million dollar mobile company, Łukasz knows about this issue as well as anyone else does.
“The latest trend is less fraud that is easy to detect, and increasing sophistication of the fraudsters. They are very smart - knowing how the ecosystem works in general, fraudsters will always be trying to stay ahead of the curve, delivering bad traffic that is continuously harder to detect. That is why there is a strong need for AI-driven solutions to help advertisers keep up with the bad guys, especially that I'm 100% sure they are already using Machine Learning for their own purposes, to try and con us,” explains Łukasz.
“Actually quite often, and our first tactic we use is the transparency - we require as much transparency as possible since a lot of fishy traffic is hidden behind cryptic id's, redirections and so on. Seeing the whole path that a user goes from the ad to the install helps mitigate the risk here.”
“The latest trend is less fraud that is easy to detect, and increasing sophistication of the fraudsters."
It seems that the never-ending “arms race” between fraudsters and anti-fraudsters became too overwhelming for many app developers. In fact, last year there was a shift from “blind” or “non-trusted” toward the so-called “trusted” traffic sources. While it’s widely accepted that “trusted” sources have little-to-no fraud, everything comes with a price - CPI (Cost per Install) across such sources is far too high. What’s more, successful app developers often invest in a big stack of traffic sources, so that they can scale channels that provide higher ROI.
“In my opinion, this [shift to trusted ad networks] is a good trend, although may lead to higher prices. But does the price really matter that much when the returns are not there? After all, what matters is how much does the user bring back not how much have we paid to acquire him,” confirms Łukasz. “In our case, the stack is quite complex, but obviously there is no escape from Google and Facebook duopoly.”
Given that app developers lose enormous amounts of money to mobile fraud in general and fraudulent installs in particular, it would be surprising if nobody tried to build a system that would prevent fraud from occurring, putting an end to a decade-long battle against the industry’s bad actors. Łukasz, however, doubts that such a solution will ever be found:
“Having the ability to prevent fraud would be indeed perfect, given low ratio of false positives of course, but I fear this is hardly possible.”
“Fraud should be detected and fought with on many levels and by everyone involved,” he adds. “Only that way we would be able to eradicate it.”
After all, having solid proof of fraudulent installs is crucial for app developers when it comes to negotiating rejects. We asked Łukasz about the main problems his team faces during the negotiation process and the company’s approach to rejecting fraud.
“I would say, in those cases, most of the time it is actually providing a good, understandable proof - that would be acceptable by both sides,” explains Łukasz.
“Again as it comes to strategy - I would refer to the data, and preferably an objective, third-party authority that could lead the explanation. In our case - Scalarr has been very helpful in that area as well.”
“Having the ability to prevent fraud would be indeed perfect, given low ratio of false positives of course, but I fear this is hardly possible.”
Just like any other industry, mobile gaming has its common growth metrics centered around customer acquisition. Being the growth-leader in the social casino category, Huuuge Games know how to set and, what’s even more important, achieve milestones. When asked about the Huuuge’s approach to measuring growth, Łukasz again referred to the importance of data.
“It depends on the genre we are talking about, but I believe our metrics don't differ much from the industry standards. We actually look at quite a few, depending on which level are we talking about. Yet, we like to think of ourselves as a data-driven company.”
“We calculate the returns in a standard way, there is no magic here. Though this is not the single measure to judge the success of the app,” states Łukasz on the company’s way of accessing ROI.
Huuuge’s data-driven approach to measuring the success of marketing activities also applies to the company’s rapid growth. When facing fierce competition in the crowded market, it’s only obvious that mobile app developers need to put their go-to strategies to test every time they consider launching new projects.
“Testing, iterating - all based on the hard data. And of course we have plans, but we'll announce them when the time comes,” claims Łukasz.
The primary driver of Huuuge Game’s remarkable success, however, seems to be the company’s well-kept secret.
“Oh come on, I cannot give away our secret sauce,” Łukasz says when asked about the company’s secret to success. “But one part of that is the fact that we are data-driven and try to be audacious in whatever we pursue.”
Key Takeaways
1. App developers need to reinforce their go-to growth marketing strategies with reliable data.
2. In 2019 mobile game apps are still a big tidbit for fraudsters.
3. Data analytics is key when it comes to boosting growth and tackling mobile ad fraud.
4. The success of an app cannot be accessed only through ROI, various metrics should be applied at different levels of the app’s lifecycle.
5. App developers should have a complex stack of traffic sources, rather than only “trusted” ones.
6. Mobile fraud is an industry-wide issue that app developers can’t solve alone.
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