Founded in 2013 by top talent from Google, Amazon, and Twitter, the company offers a complete suite of programmatic advertising solutions to help mobile companies optimize the performance of their acquisition, retention, and monetization campaigns.
Goal
・To enhance MOLOCO’s anti-fraud efforts, improve ad quality and boost ROI.
・To determine how MOLOCO’s organization can stay ahead of the arms race between fraud detection and fraudsters.
Issues
・ In late 2017 MOLOCO saw a small dip in sales due to advertisers reducing costs and lowering budgets.
・After completing conversion link tests MOLOCO identified fraudulent activity, an issue plaguing the entire industry.
Results
・Working with Phybbit’s team allowed MOLOCO to outsource their fraud protection and provide access to a dedicated team of anti-fraud professionals. This saves them both time and money as building and maintaining an in-house fraud solution is a costly investment.
・MOLOCO is now happy to collaborate with Phybbit while sharing information across both companies to better identify fraud, which improves the health of the complex ad tech ecosystem.
・Phybbit has proved to be a scalable and intuitive tool that adds value to MOLOCO’s organization. With Spider AF, it is easy to train multiple teams and get them up and running quickly to combat fraud.
・MOLOCO trusts Phybbit as one of the top anti-fraud solutions due to transparency and constantly-evolving methods and tools to combat fraud.
Q. How do you use Spider AF in your workflow?
In our company, ad operations and data science teams are in charge of the optimization of each campaign and controlling ad quality. They monitor the quality of traffic.
When Account Managers or Advertiser teams have questions or need additional information, they can go to Spider AF to drill down and reveal ad fraud. Our Account Managers are in the front line of interaction with advertisers – monitoring campaigns daily to determine value and results.
With Spider AF, the Account Management teams can easily check the quality of traffic and take immediate action.
Q. What do you like about Spider AF?
It’s a scalable and intuitive tool. There’s a lot of visualization and has the capability to slice and dice features that allow us to test any hypothesis.
Mobile Advertising is a continually evolving market, and anti-fraud is a race between the bad and the good guys.
As a startup, Phybbit is continually responding to changes in fraud techniques and developing products quickly. MOLOCO really appreciates the fact that when we have an issue, our dedicated Phybbit team responds as quickly as possible. Typically at larger institutionalized companies, your contacts can change frequently.
Q. When and why did you decide to take action against Ad Fraud?
It was late 2017 and our business was struggling in sales. Our team was concerned that advertisers had reduced budgets and lowered pricing. We also heard similar complaints from other companies. We thought something was off and weird in the entire market.
We tested a conversion link and realized that while click retention was increasing, there was a loss of installs. It was very clear that the installs were being stolen. It was a shocking moment and we realized that we need to put a high priority on fighting fraud.
Learn more: 6 Benefits of Deploying an Ad Fraud Prevention Tool
Q. What were the challenges before using Spider AF?
We were heavily invested in anti-fraud solutions and tried to share knowledge within the industry through blog posts and conferences. Spider AF’s SHARED BLACKLIST is a very novel approach that can benefit the entire industry.
Q. Are there many anti-fraud competitors in the United States? How is Phybbit different compared to them?
The anti-fraud detection market is growing rapidly with a lot of companies and industries needing a solution. It’s a serious problem, but not easy to solve. The good news is that a lot more people are aware of fraud than ever before.
Some companies are jumping into the market with big promises while not fully ready. Many people are in the market for easy money and offering a quick fix but they’re not really interested in finding a lasting solution. On the other hand, Phybbit is thinking long-term and building technology that can help the entire industry on a global scale.
Q. What has changed the most since using Spider AF?
We were extensively invested in anti-fraud as of 2018. MOLOCO is rapidly growing and to shift the investment to fighting fraud – a problem that is always compounding – was becoming difficult. Our anti-fraud engineer was worried about losing his job when he first began to work with Phybbit but now he feels Phybbit is a part of the anti-fraud team here at MOLOCO.
Q. How many people use Spider AF and what teams?
The Anti-Fraud Team is using a few people, about three per office which includes the Account Management and Ad Operations Team. When they have questions about ad fraud, they use Spider AF to check.
Q. Are there any other benefits of Spider AF?
Another benefit of using Spider AF is having your own anti-fraud experts. Building a front end tool is a big investment on the engineering side. We are now able to share our knowledge across the company easily.
Q. How do you plan to enhance business with Spider AF?
Anti-fraud and ad quality have become very important issues for large advertisers. Networks are selected by top measurement tools on the quality of the traffic and ROI.
Singular selected us as a top channel for their ROI index. This can not happen without investing in traffic quality. Anti-fraud enables better ROI.
Thank you so much!
