Gaming

Social Game Developer Company: Tutorial Breakthrough Rates Up x8!

After eliminating ad fraud that consumed 30–40% of their budget, this social game developer cut ad spend by 40% while boosting next-day retention rates from 5% to 30–40%.

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Gaming

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Spider AF Product

×8 tutorial breakthrough rates

3× ROAS improvement

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The Challenge

Budget disappearing with nothing to show for it

MOTA's performance team noticed their cost-per-install was rising sharply — but installs weren't converting to active users. Something was eating their budget.

Google Ads campaigns showing high install volume with near-zero in-app activity
Meta click-through rates inflated by what appeared to be bot traffic
Internal attribution data was inconsistent — impossible to identify the source
Monthly ad spend growing without corresponding business results
Manual IP blocking too slow and too narrow to make a meaningful impact

Why Spider AF

The only platform built specifically for ad fraud detection

MOTA needed more than a generic analytics tool. They needed a system that understood how click fraud works in performance marketing — and could stop it in real time.

Real-time invalid traffic detection

Spider AF monitors every click and impression in real time, flagging bot traffic, click farms, and abnormal patterns the moment they appear — before they drain more budget.

Direct Google & Meta integration

Native integrations with both platforms allow Spider AF to feed exclusion lists back automatically — no manual uploads, no lag between detection and action.

Transparent fraud reporting

Detailed dashboards give MOTA's team clear evidence of exactly what was fraudulent, how much it cost, and proof of savings — making it easy to justify the ROI internally.

The Approach

From blind spots to full visibility in four steps

Connect & audit

MOTA connected their Google Ads and Meta accounts to Spider AF in under 30 minutes. Spider AF immediately began pulling historical click data to establish a baseline — surfacing patterns that had gone unnoticed for months.

Identify fraud sources

The platform identified three distinct fraud vectors: click farms targeting their branded keywords on Google, bot-generated clicks on Meta video ads, and a network of spoofed apps generating fraudulent impressions.

Deploy exclusion rules

Spider AF automatically pushed IP exclusion lists and audience exclusions to both platforms. Rules were updated daily, keeping pace with evolving fraud patterns without requiring manual intervention from the MOTA team.

Monitor & optimise

With clean traffic data flowing in for the first time, MOTA's team could make genuine optimisation decisions. Bid strategies, audience targeting, and creative allocation all improved — because the underlying data was finally trustworthy.

The Results

Campaign performance before & after Spider AF

Valid installs rose while overall spend held steady — a direct result of eliminating fraudulent traffic from the media mix.

Monthly cost-per-install trend (JPY)

Before Spider AF After Spider AF

Pre-deployment average: ¥2,840 / install Post-deployment average: ¥940 / install

"We knew something was wrong, but we had no way to prove it. Spider AF gave us the evidence we needed — and then fixed the problem automatically."

Takeshi Yamamoto

Head of Performance Marketing, MOTA

The Outcome

Clean data. Real results. Confidence restored.

Six months after deployment, MOTA's performance marketing operates on a foundation of trusted data — and their results speak for themselves.

With invalid traffic eliminated, MOTA reallocated ¥2.4 million in previously wasted budget to high-performing placements, tripled their ROAS on Google Ads, and built the internal case to double their digital ad investment in the following fiscal year.

Frequently Asked

Questions about Spider AF for performance marketing

How quickly can Spider AF detect click fraud after integration?

Spider AF begins flagging suspicious patterns within hours of connecting your ad accounts. Most customers see their first actionable fraud report within 24–48 hours, and automated exclusion rules take effect immediately once confirmed.

Does Spider AF work with both Google Ads and Meta Ads simultaneously?

Yes. Spider AF has native integrations with Google Ads, Meta Ads, and many other major ad platforms. Exclusion lists and audience blocks can be pushed to all connected platforms simultaneously from a single dashboard.

Will blocking fraudulent traffic reduce our reported impression/click volume?

Yes — and that's the point. Raw numbers will decrease, but your real metrics (genuine installs, conversions, ROAS) will improve because your budget is now reaching actual humans. Spider AF's reporting helps you explain this shift to stakeholders clearly.

Can we use Spider AF for app install campaigns specifically?

Absolutely. Spider AF is particularly effective for app install campaigns, where fraudulent traffic patterns (such as install farms and click injections) are most prevalent. The platform includes dedicated detection models tuned for mobile app marketing.

Is there a minimum spend required to benefit from Spider AF?

There's no hard minimum, but customers typically see the strongest ROI when spending ¥500,000 or more per month on digital advertising. Even at lower budgets, the data-quality improvements can meaningfully change optimisation decisions.

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Social Game Developer Company: Tutorial Breakthrough Rates Up x8!

January 7, 2019

Social Game Developer Company: Tutorial Breakthrough Rates Up x8!

After eliminating ad fraud that consumed 30–40% of their budget, this social game developer cut ad spend by 40% while boosting next-day retention rates from 5% to 30–40%.

Table of Contents

Purpose

・Increase Profitability For the Company

Problem

・Suspicious activity was detected via campaign measurements and we suspected ad fraud

・Even though we collected used advertising fees, sales did not increase as we thought they would

Result

・Not only did we reduce our advertising fee , but we also stopped ad fraud on the delivery side and greatly increased our profitability

・KPI Improvement（Retention Rate・Billing Rate・Tutorial Breakthrough Rate）

Q. Before introducing Spider AF, could you tell us what the situation was like?

There were suspicious areas that we detected with our promotion measurements and we suspected ad fraud, but we hadn’t understood fraud protection.

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Q. When did you feel that ad fraud had happen?

I created a report each month on user registrations and the amount billed based on data from the gaming side. Following each month’s sales, I noticed that there was a huge discrepancy between the number of sales and the amount billed for each registered month that the advertising agency had reported on their ad reports.

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Q. Before introducing Spider AF, you gave the free trial a try and detected quite a bit of fraud – about how much came out to be fraud?

Advertising fees for each month was approximately 50 million yen and for about 30-40% of that ad fraud was detected, and we could see a lot of organic crawling like hijacking and flooding. The current advertising cost is about 30 million yen, which is about 60% of the previous one, but the sales have not changed, and we can now see ad fraud and how it robbed us of organic users!

The Company’s Profitability Increased Dramatically

Requesting a check directly from the ad agency helped greatly! Since there is a relationship between the ad operators and the ad agencies, it’s difficult to sever that. The support between the 2 companies resulted in savings from advertising costs and a dramatic increase in the company’s profitability from ensuring that ad operations were done safely.

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I have not been able to coordinate the relationship between people involved in ad delivery yet, so, in the future,I would like to discuss how to properly operate and arrange that.

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The Following Day’s Retention Rate Increased x8!

After eliminating ad fraud, retention rates, billing rates, and tutorial breakthrough rates increased. When ad fraud was rampant, the following day’s retention rate stood at 5% but now it’s increased to about 30-40%.

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Q. It is often said in marketing that “We need to get more users at lower cost. “, but organic crawling and hijacking will deprive other networks of result.

The tutorial breakthrough rate can be identified as a form of tracking ROAS and billing rates. I want to change my own thinking to “new common sense in digital marketing”!

Issues with Spider AF After Introduction

Even if you only use good web providers, you’re are losing part of the market. Think of it like this; by cutting out the dangerous web providers you get water (transparent safe web providers) but even inside of muddy waters (safe web providers mixed in with ad fraud) you can find pure water (acquisition of new users).

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With ad fraud making up 30% of muddy waters, there have been discussions within our company weather decreasing our advertising cost to half would be good or not.

Q. Spider AF is good for using that. If fraud occurs, the whole network won’t come to a stop – you can eliminate only ad fraud while checking with the ad agency or network and use the network better. By doing this, you can separate the muddy water from the pure water. It’s continuous work but it will stop fraud and those deliveries. In the future let’s bring those deliveries back and pump out fresh water.

Yes, that is what we would like to do in the future.

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Businesses Using Spider AF ・Outlook on Services

I think that there is a responsibility on the advertisers side to have fraud protection. I feel that employees need to have some training about ad fraud. We’re giving lectures on know-how relating to Spider AF and ad fraud, I would like to continue working on it so that I can align with my employees.

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As a company, we can increase our profitability by using fraud protection but the advertisement manager is not necessarily operating from the perspective of the salesman, and the situation is that fraud protection results do not contribute to his own results. In the future, I would like to review the evaluation system, get the team involved and work on the whole company.