Imagine if your competitor installed your app and clicking your ads to sabotage you, and your sponsor will just terminate your account without notice for fraudulent clicks, it’s a scary scenario.
You will just change ad network. Also what is the motive for your competitor? the important thing for them is to remove you from google play not from Appodeal
But no one want to loose money… Their rules are not good… Better use admob
I am not 100% sure, but this is how they do it.
Secretly something is there which matches your testing device with your own app. So that is first check. If someone found guilty, Network will punish with big hammer.
If its your competitor, Ads get blocked for sometime it had happened once with me. Later i forgot to continue with that to check the rest of part 
May be you can enjoy ads free version after that.
But honestly speaking, this is not good practice.
Our algorithms never ban anyone automatically.
We have different flags against each developer account in Appodeal.
Each flag raises more attention to your account.
If you got too many flags — your account is reviewed by fraud prevention department.
They manually inspect your app, study precisely all clicks and conversions.
A decision to ban an account is never made, unless evidence is obvious.
After fraud prevention manager makes a decision to ban app (trust me, we have a lot of data to inspect), your case is escalated to one of our senior engineers. He checks that the decision is valid and evidence is enough to shut down the account. Only in this case your accounts gets blocked.
We can see the difference, when random users click on your banners, sometimes very intensively, and when you do it on purpose.
I hope this reveals enough details about Appodeal policies. To sum it up, I would like to give a definition of “invalid activity”, that might lead to the ban on Appodeal:
Invalid activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser’s costs or a publisher’s earnings. Invalid activity covers intentionally fraudulent traffic as well as accidental clicks. If it appears to us that a publisher has been clicking on their own ads to inflate their earnings or an advertiser’s costs, we may disable the account to protect our advertisers. This includes, but is not limited to:
Clicks or impressions generated by publishers clicking on their own ads
Publishers encouraging clicks on their ads
Automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software
Unfortunately, we can’t share specific details about each case.
You should not ban anyone without warning or email etc…
This is looks you are scammer. After this topic, I wont use your company.
I agree with you.
Moreover, they say that the ban process is manual and take time. If this is right, sending an email with a little explanation (no need to show all the algorithm for that, some infos such as country, clicks/days, installs are sufficient) should not take a lot of time comparing to the whole ban process.
Hi everyone,
Just to let you know, at AdBuddizwe never ban users for no reason 
We also have a system to detect fraudulent activity, but we usually warn users before proceeding to closing their account - especially if they have been with us for a while and have a pending balance.
If you are considering an alternative to your ad network, feel free to check out our websiteor send me an email: [email protected]
I think so, people should be warned before being banned and for the first time invalid clicks maybe a bit more could be deleted
Our policy is very simple.
- If you send us valid traffic, we send you higher payouts.
- If we are suspicious about user activity, we ALWAYS reach out over e-mail and ask to explain.
- Only when we are 100% sure, that traffic is fraudulent, user gets banned.
Within less than 6 months Appodeal has over 1000 active users. Among 1000 users, we blocked 12 users so far.
Indeed I encourage everyone, who is looking to produce artificial clicks to consider alternative ad network.
Appodeal pays fair, much better than anyone else on the market, and we expect strictly fair developers in return.
I got it. If user doesn’t send artificial traffic, no need to worry. So i don’t need to worry about it.
Anyway i am happy with your system and service. And i want to work with you for long time
Hey jaortizrojas
indeed Appodeal is a scam! I have some information to share
Heres my report of digging inside the Appodeal’s internals.
Home | Appodeal states to be an ad revenue optimization tool.
I used tcpdump/tcpflow/wireshark combined with some mitm assistance (see fiddler) and app behaviour observation to prove the fraud.
(literally by filming actual app’s screen and counting banners on the device and comparing my real numbers to the backend statistics)
I uncovered that this so called “revenue optimizer” network is a total fraud and scam!
Please take no offense. Its just some info I have to share with you. Everything is up to you. Make your own decisions!
Please verify everything by yourself. I’m not going to participate in any debates.
So the Appodeal scam is HUGE. And it is ongoing. Right now.
- They use some botnet like methods to manipulate App Store and Google Play rankings
- They shave off their partners
I uncovered botnet-like network activity originating from the Appodeal SDK
This behavior is concealed by default and activated only by their command server under certain conditions.
How does it work?
Appodeal promises us to get more money / fillrate / eCPM. However its just the smokescreen for the original criminal scheme!
By integrating the SDK, developers voluntarily (yet unwillingly!) participate in their distributed botnet-like ranking manipulation system!
As all of their app’s users do.
Ok cool but really how it works??
Appodeal partners sign up and install Appodeal SDK into their apps.
Appodeal binary code gets executed each time the user launches an app on his device.
The code runs with game and starts to exploit traffic from all participating devices of this distributed network.
Of course devs are not aware of this activity.
They expect SDK to make a good job of honest banner mediation.
However, I studied the traffic from some devices comparing to the factual banners appearance on the real device’s screen. As well as with the appodeal’s backend stats. And got some hard facts. They shave up to 30% of traffic!
So what does the so called “botnet” do?
By the packet from Appodeal server, SDK switches away from “fair mode” of ad mediation. To rotation of Appodeal’s private interstitial.
This create very intense and very focused promotion of specific products affiliated with Appodeal.
They just select the target and voila all the devices start to promote apps and manipulate the Appstore and Google Play, all at once!
Please note, that this activity originates from the vast distributed network of many many devices.
Of course it influences Google Play and Apple’s App Store rankings.
A developer wouldn’t even get a penny from it! The interstitials are not added to backend stats at all!
Conclusion: Appodeal just steal from the developers and use their userbase to promote their own affiliates.
By their concealed botlike network!
- Appodeal uses their own accounts for all 3rd party Ad Networks.
Ads are tracked by the system directly, putting the developer out of the loop.
There is no way to to link my own accounts to the system! So I couldn’t even get the real stats!
This opens vast area for for ripping off clients.
Thanks Appodeal for being so kind to the users helping them to create all accounts by yourself!
You can compare appodeal stats with actual banners impressions.
Just count your actual impressions within the app.
Compare it with the backend stats. And see the difference.
They just STEAL your money. Check it for yourself before they didn’t hide it for a moment.
Of course their system conceals this activity very well.
If you really want to catch them by your own, just playtest for a while to catch this behavior on a device!
It took me more than 20-25 hours to capture it.
Looks like the network is still in beta. And they promote only limited set of their own apps for test purposes. But this could change.
I had to record and review many hours of video from my device until caught them up!
So to summarize:
- Appodeal steal from their partners
- They use their system to promote own products and manipulate App Store and Google Play rankings.
I repeat please don’t trust my words and check it for yourself.
Do whatever you have to do. I’ll encourage you to follow my way and explore it by yourself.
You could substantiate your accusation by posting details which apps are promoted and post the Wireshark capture of the ‘packet’ which switches to ‘fraud mode’.
My name is Pavel Golubev, I started Appodeal.
Indeed, Appodeal is an ad revenue optimizer, that pulls higher numbers from ad networks. I started Appodeal because I got sick of ad networks built in favor of advertisers and decided to create something for publishers.
Most likely, person, who started this thread is someone, who got banned by Appodeal for artificial activity.
The whole story is made up and has no real evidence.
Anyway, I feel obliged to respond:
-
Appodeal, Inc. is an open and transparent company, registered in Delaware. It has recently raised a $3.1M funding round (http://crunchbase.com/organization/appodeal). It has successfully passed due diligence. I was born overseas and came to the U.S. to build a great company, to meet and work with great people here in Silicon Valley, to improve the mobile advertisement industry and take it to the next step. I invested all my money in Appodeal, I sold my car, I moved to a smaller apartment. Now you are saying that I did all this just to start some pathetic fraud? Your accusations are pointless. The reason I reveal my Facebook and my Skype (and my other personal information) everywhere is because I’m not afraid to share anything about myself — I have nothing to hide.
-
When we started Appodeal, my goal was to optimize earnings coming from our own apps. My previous company published over 3000 apps on Google Play & iOS since 2011. We made Appodeal available for everyone, when we managed to improve our inventory earnings up to 270%.
-
There is a lot of background activity initiated by Appodeal SDK. The purpose of such activity is to run an auction among ad networks and pick the winner — ad network that offers better rate for your traffic. Auctions are running constantly.
-
Appodeal is not taking any of your traffic, it does not charge any commissions and does not cut anything from you.
We make money by selling a part of your traffic at a higher rate to direct advertisers, but only when they can offer a better rate than ad networks.
Sample 1:
- Admob offers $0.003 per impression.
- Chartboost offers $0.002 per impressions.
Impression is sold to Admob and $0.003 is paid to publisher.
Sample 2:
- Admob offers $0.002 per impression.
- Chartboost offers $0.003 per impressions.
- Direct advertiser offers $0.004 per impression.
Impression is sold to direct advertiser, $0.003 is paid to publisher, $0.001 is retained by Appodeal (because it managed to sell your impressions at a higher rate than any other ad network).
- If topic starter had a single fact, he/she would post it.
There are several referrals to tcpdump/wireshark/fiddler etc in the post, but not a single traffic dump is attached.
If you want to continue this discussion, please submit some real evidence, traffic dump with your explanations would be great.
Appodeal is a unique, great and innovative company that protects publishers interests on mobile ads marketplace, rather than advertisers.
Appodeal signed up over 2000 app developers in less than 6 months.
Most of them confirmed earnings improvement.
Your entire post about a network becomes useless and biased when you have been banned and kicked out by them in a offence of artificial clicks.
May be developers will notice that while reading ur post.
So. I know this is little bit old but still hope they improved their service. I want to tell my little story. Because based on the information here what I read and my story what happened to my I would never use APPODEAL. Just read it thank oyu.
I AM A VICTIM
I started at march new app which is IN BETA currently at the play store (So not released). But still while its in development I already have over 15k downloads. The feedbacks are mostly nice. They like the app. With this app you are able to get rewards. The rewards are bitcoins which is really small amount. I just show video rewarded ads.
On may - august I realized I have high invalid activity at admob. It was 15euro but I just earned 70 euro. So it was really high. I just tried to figure out why I have this. From where does it come. It was very new for me because I do apps since 2013. Had never this problem. So I even started to ask here in forum: http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/48482-high-invalid-clicks-activity-since-new-app-admob.html. But I did not get any response. So guys are too busy or they did not understand me or they do not know the problem. Nevermind
At least I found it out. Some user see that toooo “funny” to use virtual android machines (which was first hard for to me to find out how they did it) and to create up to 300-500 accounts with my app. So those user are using even PROXY and something like BOTS which constantly click on ads, click on rewards if they can. There is an affiliate bonus if a user was invited / used code by another user. So if you invite you get extra bonus if the user gets rewarded.
It was for me a shock and big fight against them. I needed to program multiaccounts check, and ip comparison and more too see exactly who is using bots / multiaccounts and more.
So based on the information what I am reading here is: pavel.golubev would bann me because they check it up and see there is 300-500 x per hour artifical clicks on ads or user what ever. And yes “NixIs” is using bots on own app to generate revenue. So I wouldn’t have the chance to explain because its like “johnedepth” didn’t get any email… so I think wouldn’t get it too.
So HOW I could handle this. In this case I AM A VICTIM
johnedepth, perhaps he was also only a victim like me. Maybe his user used bots or what ever.
Now the funny part. 3-4 month ago I created on the appodeal website my account. I also used their tools to set up my admob account. I was almost ready to use it. But their UNITY Plugin didn’t work. I get all the time errors. So I stopped using it. So if I could figure out… and would start to use it… I were banned now I think.
So my question were… how would pavel.golubev react to this situation WITHOUT to know it whats going on… yep with a bann.
I am not attacking… I am just speaking based on their information which I have read here.
It makes me really sad because I wanted to use appodeal.
First of all, if you give that kind of rewards to users, it should be clear that sooner or later cheaters will use it. :rolleyes:
Second: It is against the AdMob policies to give such kind of rewards. Sorry, but you will not see much sorrow from my side. You complain about cheating users but you are cheating ad companies at the same time.
Third: AdMob will disallow the practice of ad optimization networks very soon. Therefore it will make less sense to use one of them in the future.
What you mean? what will AdMob disallow exactly?