The Current Applications Of Artificial Intelligence In Mobile Advertising Posted on : Dec 25 - 2018

The concept of self-programming computers was closer to science fiction than reality just ten years ago. Today, we feel comfortable conversing with smart personal assistant like Siri and keep wondering just how Spotify guessed what we like.

It’s not just the mobile apps that are becoming more “intelligent”. Advertising encouraging us to interact and install those apps has made its way onto a way new quality level as well. Thanks to advances in machine learning (ML), the baseline technology for AI, mobile advertising industry is now undergoing significant transformation.

AI can reduce mobile advertising fraud

In 2018, mobile ad fraud rates have doubled compared to the previous year. To tap into the expanding marketer’s ad budgets, hackers have created a host of new tricks to their playbook. According to Adjust data, the following mobile ad threats have prevailed:

SDK spoofing accounts represented 37% of ad fraud. In SDK Spoofing malicious code is injected in one app (the attacked) that simulates ad clicks, installs and other fake engagement and sends faulty signals to an attribution provider on behalf of the “victim” app. Such attacks can make a significant dent in an advertiser’s budget by forcing them to pay for installs that never actually took place.

Click injections accounted for 27% of attacks. Cybercriminals trigger clicks before the app installation is complete and receive credit for those installs as a result. Again, these can drain your ad budgets and dilute your ROI numbers.

Faked installs and click spam accounted for 20% and 16% of fraudulent activities respectively. E-commerce apps have been in the fraud limelight this year, with nearly two-fifths of all app installs being marked as “fake” or “spam”, followed closely by games and travel apps. Forrester further reports that 69% of marketers whose monthly digital advertising budgets run above $1 million admit that at least 20% of those budgets are drained by fraud on the mobile web.

If the issue is so big, why no one’s tackling it? Well, detecting ad fraud is a complex process that requires 24/7 monitoring and analysis of incoming data. And that’s where AI comes to the fore. Intelligent algorithms can operationalize large volumes of data at a pace far more accurate than any human analyst, spot abnormalities and trigger alerts for further investigation. What’s more promising is that with advances in deep learning, the new-gen AI-powered fraud systems will also become capable to self-tune their performance over time, learning to predict, detect and mitigate emerging threats. View More