Developer Reports 60% Of Google Ads App Installs Came From Suspected Bots
One developer's server logs show install campaigns can bill for conversions that never reached his app through Google Play, which puts the number Google Ads reports and the number an advertiser can actually use at odds.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Nick Abe, who runs the puzzle app Dayzle, spent about $220 on Google app ads and found that roughly 60% of the installs Google Ads counted as results behaved like bots. Google Ads recorded 56 installs over two weeks; 33 ran an old app version, opened the app once, and spent 0 seconds on each screen. Abe has asked Google to investigate a refund.
Abe started with a 40 Canadian dollar daily budget and a 1.50 Canadian dollar target cost per install for the Android version of Dayzle. The budget barely moved for several days, so he removed the target as a test. Google Ads then spent 80 Canadian dollars in a day and logged 21 installs, while Dayzle's admin panel showed only one.
The 20 devices missing from his panel were running an app version that had not been distributed for several days, had opened the app once, and had spent 0 seconds on each screen. Abe suspects a bot farm generating view-through conversions from a saved app file.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.