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Many mobile marketers know that Scalarr has the most accurate anti-fraud solution in the market and have had the chance to see how it works. Nevertheless, it's always interesting to know the behind-the-scenes of how the product was conceived and what the journey was like to build a company from the ground up.
For Inna Ushakova (CEO and Co-founder) and Yuriy Yashunin (CPO and Co-founder), the road to Scalarr's foundation was paved with challenges and opportunities and in this in-depth conversation, we learn the story of Scalarr first-hand from the company's founders.
Let’s dive into the remarkable story behind Scalarr’s genesis, as disclosed by Inna and Yuriy.
- Inna, tell us about the background story of Scalarr
Inna Ushakova: Before Scalarr was conceived, I co-founded and ran a marketing agency and experienced money losses directly caused by mobile ad fraud - it was quite a mess! When you run advertising campaigns aggressively, even 1% in errors can cost a lot of money. But instead of sitting on our laurels and let fraudsters have their way, we decided to go above and beyond to develop an anti-fraud solution which would ensure the most accurate, complete, and consistent outputs are achieved. That’s how Scalarr was founded in November 2016.
In essence, Scalarr came into existence to help mobile companies detect different types of ad fraud by applying machine learning algorithms. In our effort to significantly reduce the number of false-positives and false-negatives, we apply to semi-supervised models based on neural networks to automatically discover and identify fraud patterns from massive amounts of data such as click, install and post-install metrics. With our unsupervised machine learning engine, we are capable of constantly searching for new patterns and modifications, which happen on a regular basis. By working with us, our clients have access to the most advanced technology as we implement a personalized approach and logic in data computation and analysis.
- How did you come up with the idea of founding Scalarr?
Inna Ushakova: The idea was initially formed when I was working at Zenna. Our focus was to promote mobile games, mainly in Asia and the United States. Over time, ad fraud became very sophisticated and we were at very high risk of losing customers because of it. Out initial intention was to build something internally, but as we dug deeper into the problem, we understood how the market struggled to fight ad fraud. Traditional fraud detection tools were not able to solve the problem and at that point, we decided to share our product with others. Best decision we could have made!
Traditional fraud detection tools were not able to solve the problem and at that point, we decided to share our product with others
- What were the most challenging areas in the early stages of the company’s growth?
Yuriy Yashunin: Usually, it is extremely challenging to find a product-market fit, but I’m glad to say that we were very lucky because, from previous experience, we were very much aware of the mobile ecosystem and knew all the pitfalls. But one of the most challenging aspects we dealt with during our early stages were the exceptionally limited resources available to us at the time as we needed to immediately engage with large-scale competitors. And not only did we had to go head to head with our competition, but we needed to defeat them in this competition.
Another important aspect of the mobile ad ecosystem had to do with the high dynamics of market changes since "black swans" appear quite often. Fortunately, Scalarr's team managed to overcome this phase and now, we are in a phase of active scaling.
A great idea is relatively worthless unless it is put to use to help others. Taking an idea to fruition is an exceptional feat, but history has taught us that the road that leads to success is far from over. As Inna and Yuriy share with us, it is crucial to understand the profile of the ideal customer as well as where to look for them.
- Who are the main Scalarr customers?
Inna Ushakova: Right now, we have among our customers a lot of great companies such as MobilityWare, Playstudios, Pixonic, Joom, and many more. And each of these clients has indirectly helped us find key abnormalities that pointed out to some new fraud patterns. Our clients have become an integral part of who we are and what we do on a daily basis. Together, we aim to change the mobile ecosystem to make it more transparent.
- What are the biggest differences between customers of the United States and Europe?
Inna Ushakova: In regards to business mentality and culture, of course there are differences. But when it comes to fraud, both European and US-based customers look for a reliable partner they can trust and who can provide accurate answers about fraudulent traffic and the reason behind it. Customers are experts in their domain, very well educated and familiar with the mobile ad fraud problem, which motivates us to stay at the forefront of cutting-edge technology and continuously improve our engine.
- What are the key benefits of Scalarr for mobile marketers and user acquisition managers?
Inna Ushakova: Accuracy. On top of this, we provide full support to our customers in negotiations about rejects where we play the role of independent arbiter, speaking always on behalf of Scalarr.
Customers are experts in their domain, very well educated and familiar with the mobile ad fraud problem, which motivates us to stay at the forefront of cutting-edge technology and continuously improve our engine
The mobile industry is fast-moving and dynamic, with new technologies emerging nearly on a daily basis. Thus, it is essential for companies to be spearheads of cutting-edge tools and techniques, as well as being proficient about developing new and improved methods of solving problems. It is through innovation and the constant search for an improved product that catapult startup companies towards success. Both Inna and Yuriy share more about the technology that powers Scalarr.
- What about the Machine Learning engine makes it more effective than a rules-based solution?
Yuriy Yashunin: Detecting fraudulent installs requires us to analyze vast volumes of parameters and correlations, so it’s practically impossible to solve this mammoth task without having an intelligent anti-fraud platform by your side. That’s precisely where ML-based solutions come in handy and that is why rules-based anti-fraud solutions provide such low accuracy and completeness in fraud identification. They simply are not able to take into account the entire volume of a large number of data features and the correlations between them. Machine Learning algorithms, on the other hand, automate the investigation of data volumes that are hard to process for humans and analyze massive amounts of metrics along with the correlations between them. Today, ML technology is the best ally to fight fraud successfully.
- Tell us about the shift in technology recently experienced and how does this speak to the strategic direction of Scalarr?
Yuriy Yashunin: The main trend that we observe in technology is maximum automation. In our industry, machine learning helps a great deal but if you use ML technology alone, it does not guarantee success for an anti-fraud product. A huge impact on the quality of anti-fraud protection includes the importance of choosing the right ML algorithms best suited to solve a fraud issue, the completeness and quality of data used for analysis, and last but not least, high-quality feature engineering by the Data Science team. Thus, in accordance with Scalarr's strategic development plan, we use neural network algorithms in the personalized ML models of our customers. These algorithms further improve the accuracy of our solution. In addition, we have experiments underway to use more complex deep learning algorithms. Stay tuned!
Machine learning helps a great deal but if you use ML technology alone, it does not guarantee success for an anti-fraud product
As mentioned before, the mobile industry is shifting gears constantly - demanding that companies stay one step ahead and with eyes set on the future. And before we put a bow on this Q&A, Inna and Yuriy share with us their thoughts about Scalarr’s future ahead as well as what we can expect in the mobile industry.
- How do you see Scalarr and fraud detection evolving in the future?
Yuriy Yashunin: Based on our experience, we can argue that in the future, fraudsters will continue to evolve and refine their fraud technology. We foresee that fraudsters will continue the ongoing process of reverse engineering anti-fraud solutions, which will allow them to respond more quickly to the disclosure of their fraud schemes and modify them accordingly. A new study from Juniper Research forecasts that advertisers will lose $42 billion of ad spend globally this year to fraudulent activities and by 2023 advertisers’ total loss to fraud will exceed $100 billion. But if fraudsters go hard, we go harder.
In this heady industry, those ones that have experience and expertise on their side are come up on top. At Scalarr, we will continue our journey to deliver a comprehensive and integrated customer protection solution against mobile ad fraud that is applicable on all ad layers, including impressions, clicks, installs, actions or events, purchases, and more. And to strengthen our expertise, we've invited mobile industry experts to join our team as advisors. Stuart Smith-Lewis, former General Manager at GSN Games, and Bennett Rosenblatt, Programmatic Technology Lead at Uber, help us strategize and plan our approach about addressing mobile ad fraud.
Thus, Scalarr customers will be fully protected from any possible types of fraud.
A new study from Juniper Research forecasts that advertisers will lose $42 billion of ad spend globally this year to fraudulent activities
- What advice would you give to mobile marketers expanding UA campaigns to avoid being cheated by fraudsters?
Inna Ushakova: Right now, we see a lot of developers who aim to solve the problem of fraud to simply stop working with publishers who generated even a small number of fraudulent installs. Of course it's an ill-advised situation but marketers should know that fraud exists everywhere and it is mainly caused because the advertising industry is not well regulated and it is not transparent. Shutting down all publishers that generate fraud is probably not the best strategy since in the end, marketers will face the need to increase CPI costs to remain competitive and buy enough volumes of traffic with the same margin in trusted sources. At Scalarr, some of our customers faced this issue and struggled, and from this experience, my advice to marketers is to measure. Measure and thoroughly consider the risks, threats and opportunities of each publisher. I've seen numerous well-known networks provide non-human traffic from these GEOs where they are not strong enough and lack inventory. As that makes them look quickly for new sources whenever such a client request comes up, but they could still be a very reliable partner on the territories they are originally from.
Shutting down all publishers that generate fraud is probably not the best strategy since in the end, marketers will face the need to increase CPI costs to remain competitive and buy enough volumes of traffic with the same margin in trusted sources
- What is next?
Inna Ushakova: We are planning to introduce a few new products very soon, which would help our customers better combat fraud. Plus right now we are working on some partnerships which would give us even more data for enrichment. We know how tough it is to build a company and why it is so important to be fully armed to conquer a major summit and we want to back up our clients in this. So as Yura said - stay tuned!
Interesting, right? If your curiosity is piqued and you have more questions about Scalarr or want to test our solution, please contact us.
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