论文标题
了解激励移动应用程序在Google Play商店中安装
Understanding Incentivized Mobile App Installs on Google Play Store
论文作者
论文摘要
“激励”广告平台允许移动应用程序开发人员直接付款用户安装和与移动应用程序互动(例如,创建帐户,进行应用内购买)来获取新用户。 Apple App Store禁止激励安装,并由Google Play商店灰心,因为它们可以操纵App Store Metrics(例如,安装计数,在顶级图表中出现)。但是,许多组织仍然为Android应用提供激励化的安装服务。在本文中,我们介绍了第一项研究,以了解激励移动应用程序安装活动的生态系统,并通过一系列测量结果及其更广泛的后果。我们确定激励的安装活动,要求用户安装应用程序并执行针对操纵各种用户参与度指标(例如,日常活跃用户,用户会话长度)和收入的应用程序内任务。我们的结果表明,这些人为膨胀的指标可以有效地改善应用商店的指标,并帮助移动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,LAX执行Google Play商店的现有政策,以防止这些行为。它进一步激发了更严格的激励安装活动的警务。 Google Play商店也可以利用我们提出的测量来确定潜在的违反政策。
"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.