Understanding Incentivized Mobile App Installs on Google Play Store
Understanding Incentivized Mobile App Installs on Google Play Store
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DOI：
10.1145/3419394.3423662
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发表时间：
2020-10
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Shehroze Farooqi;Álvaro Feal;Tobias Lauinger;Damon McCoy;Zubair Shafiq;Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez
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文献类型：
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作者：
Shehroze Farooqi;Álvaro Feal;Tobias Lauinger;Damon McCoy;Zubair Shafiq;Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez
“激励的”广告平台允许移动的应用程序开发者通过直接向用户付费来安装和参与移动的应用程序（例如，创建帐户，进行应用内购买）。激励安装被Apple App Store禁止，并被Google Play Store劝阻，因为它们可以操纵应用商店指标（例如，安装数量、在顶部图表中的出现）。然而，许多组织仍然为Android应用程序提供激励安装服务。在本文中，我们提出了第一项研究，以了解Android中的激励移动的应用程序安装活动的生态系统及其更广泛的影响，通过一系列的测量。我们确定了激励安装活动，这些活动要求用户安装应用程序并执行应用程序内任务，目标是操纵各种用户参与度指标（例如，日活跃用户、用户会话长度）和收入。我们的研究结果表明，这些人为夸大的指标可以有效地改善应用程序商店的指标，以及帮助移动的应用程序开发人员吸引风险投资家的资金。我们的研究还表明，Google Play商店为防止这些行为而制定的现有政策执行不力。它进一步激发了对激励安装活动进行更严格监管的必要性。Google Play商店也可以利用我们建议的测量方法来识别潜在的政策违规行为。
"Incentivized" advertising platforms allow mobile app developers to acquire new users by directly paying users to install and engage with mobile apps (e.g., create an account, make in-app purchases). Incentivized installs are banned by the Apple App Store and discouraged by the Google Play Store because they can manipulate app store metrics (e.g., install counts, appearance in top charts). Yet, many organizations still offer incentivized install services for Android apps. In this paper, we present the first study to understand the ecosystem of incentivized mobile app install campaigns in Android and its broader ramifications through a series of measurements. We identify incentivized install campaigns that require users to install an app and perform in-app tasks targeting manipulation of a wide variety of user engagement metrics (e.g., daily active users, user session lengths) and revenue. Our results suggest that these artificially inflated metrics can be effective in improving app store metrics as well as helping mobile app developers to attract funding from venture capitalists. Our study also indicates lax enforcement of the Google Play Store's existing policies to prevent these behaviors. It further motivates the need for stricter policing of incentivized install campaigns. Our proposed measurements can also be leveraged by the Google Play Store to identify potential policy violations.