Mobile measurement and fraud prevention industry leader Adjust announced the launch of its new Unbotify product to end in-app bot fraud.
Unlike mobile ad fraud, in-app bot fraud does not target the marketing budget of an app, but attacks its business model after installation. Bots can be programmed to perform various in-app events, and as they imitate human behaviour, this type of fraud has become one of the hardest to detect and fight.
“Bots can affect all apps in a variety of ways, across all vertical lines. They can attack community gaming apps or ruin their virtual currency economy, steal credit card or scalp limited edition items from e-commerce businesses, and spam users on dating apps,” explained Paul H. Müller, Co-Founder & CTO at Adjust.
“Unbotify adds another arrow to Adjust’s quiver and forms the foundation of our next-generation in-app fraud protection tools.” Unbotify is a tailor-made solution that uses biometric sensor data to build machine learning models based on real-user behaviour. By learning a natural user-flow app, the solution can distinguish between humans and bots.
Unbotify will be available separately from Adjust’s Fraud Prevention Suite, which stops ad fraud-performance-based fraud that directly steals ad money from the marketing budget of an app. Because it’s a standalone product, Unbotify can be implemented alongside the Attribution Service of Adjust or other vendors.
“In-app bot fraud isn’t just a monetary issue-it has knock-on effects on user experience, retention, in-app analytics, and breaches that compromise user data and scar a brand’s reputation,” commented Yaron Oliker, Unbotify’s co-founderand CEO. “Our behavioral-biometrics solution detects bots in real-time and offers the best possible insurance to protect user experience.”
Unbotify’s research estimates that some of today’s largest mobile apps are losing around 10 percent of their revenue from bot fraud–and with the global app economy expected to surpass $120 billion by the end of 2019, apps ‘ success boosts seriously.
The launch follows Adjust’s acquisition of Unbotify in January. Cybersecurity and AI startup was named’ Israel’s most innovative company in 2017′ by Fast Company and listed as one of Gartner’s’ Cool Vendors in Advertising 2018.’ Unbotify’s bot-deterring solution is used by some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies in U.S. and European e-commerce, social, search and gaming verticals.
Unbotify’s acquisition forms a larger part of Adjust’s global commitment to fight fraud. The shared mission of companies is to provide the most robust solution to one of today’s major application security issues— stop malicious bots.
