APAC Markets Witness High Fraud Rates – AppsFlyer Report

AppsFlyer, a Bengaluru based attribution platform has released their annual fraud report “The State of Mobile Ad Fraud 2020 Edition.” The report tells that India has become the region where the majority of the frauds take place and reported 3.8 billion installs across 55,000 apps in the Entertainment, Finance, Gaming, Shopping, Social, and Travel sectors.

Commenting on their findings, Sanjay Trishal, Country Manager of AppsFlyer India said, “COVID-19 has forced many countries to implement strict lockdowns, resulting in work-from-home arrangements that are now considered the new normal. With more people spending time at home, H1-2020 saw a marked increase in mobile app usage, particularly in the Gaming and Entertainment verticals, thus tempting fraudsters. APAC has witnessed high fraud rates with BOT attacks contributing close to 65 percent of them. Further, India ranks No.1 in app install fraud rate in the Entertainment vertical within the region, indicating a more targeted and sophisticated approach from fraudsters. As India becomes more app savvy, marketers must be watchful of rising tactics like BOT attacks, click-flooding, and install-hijacking. It’s time for marketers to work more closely with mobile measurement partners to avoid ad fraud losses.”

According to the reports, the fraudsters use bot attacks to fake app install and the majority of the downloads take place in Android phones. Large marketing budgets and high-cost install rates in APAC regions make them the prime target. Apart from the Finance sector, the travel industry has also suffered from such cyber-attacks from fraudsters in recent times.

In the Finance sector, work from home and online banking factors are the main reasons for the rise in online frauds. They remain the most exposed with 40% overall exposure in the past year. Due to this, shopping apps have stepped up to protect their customers and this improvement has led to a 30% decrease in fraudulent when compared to last year.