Download bots were the “well-known secret” of the app ecosystem
It’s remarkable how widely-known the phenomenon of fraudulent download bots was throughout the iOS developer community. Essentially, bots or automated programs have been used for well over a year to download apps until they reach the top of the charts where they can be seen by real users.
Most every large player knew about them, but I could never definitively prove their existence because most developers clammed up or said they would never touch the stuff. In the interest of self-preservation, many suspected bot marketing companies also never responded to any of my inquiries over the last several months.
But after the story broke on a Touch Arcade forum earlier this month, I brought up the issue at our Inside Social Apps conference last week. Many of the biggest developers and marketing companies had been well-aware of the issue for months — if not years. I hadn’t had the time to go through and compile my notes until now, but here are some choice excerpts about the bots issue from last week.
It’s absurd to think about how long Apple must have known about and tolerated this practice.
Several panelists had said they had tested out marketing services that may have used bots. They were suspicious because these services provided downloads without any corresponding bump in active usage.
Fiksu, a company that helps developers acquire users in the most efficient way possible, had tested out one of these marketing services early last year.
“We were approached by these services many months ago,” said Micah Adler, the company’s chief executive. “It was presented as an ad network, but it became obvious to us that users weren’t even launching the app. So we stopped using it after that.”
He added, “It’s been this well-known secret in the ecosystem.”
A few of the best-known mobile game developers acknowledged that their high chart rankings may have partially relied on downloads by bots. Andreessen Horowitz-backed TinyCo said it has since turned off all unorthodox marketing channels and is re-evaluating how they promote their apps. In the original Touch Arcade forum post that broke the story, TinyCo was named as a potential user of a fraudulent marketing service that approached a developer along with Crowdstar, Booyah, Funzio and Mindjolt.
“We use something like 40 or 50 sources to acquire users,” said TinyCo’s chief executive Suleman Ali. “We spend millions every month acquiring users. We’ve reached out to all of them and stopped doing user acquisition with any company where we didn’t know what the source of traffic was. We are now focusing on networks like iAd, AdMob and Chartboost where there’s real visibility.”
Storm8, a bootstrapped game developer founded by Facebook alums, said that it was possible that some of the company’s downloads may have come from bots, but the company wouldn’t know with certainty.
“We talked to many, many companies, but we don’t know for sure if we did use [services that use bots],” said Storm8′s chief executive Perry Tam. He added, “As a developer, I’m glad Apple issued a warning. It shows that they’re dedicated to maintaining the integrity of the App Store. The ultimate goal is to get the best content to users.”
Update: Storm8 sent us an additional comment tonight. “Storm8 has no need to use bots and strongly rejects the practice. The vast majority of its installs come from its own network of 5 million daily active users. With this strong network, Storm8 can cross promote a game to drive more than 100,000 downloads a day.”
Apps from both companies dipped on the free charts at the beginning of this month when Apple issued a warning to developers about using services that manipulate chart rankings. But they’ve since climbed back up.
In general, it’s hard for external watchdogs like the press or developers with clean records to police the charts. It usually costs between $5,000 and $15,000 to use these services, which is expensive for a media company to pay for. Plus, there are at least a half-dozen names of companies that I’ve heard of that do this. When one is caught, they re-emerge under a different name not long after.
If Apple tracks active usage data on all of the apps on iOS, it should be able to backtrack which ones are getting boosts in downloads without any commensurate increase in usage. It should probably also tweak the rankings algorithm so it doesn’t rely so heavily on raw download volume. Apple continually experiments with the rankings system, and temporarily made a dramatic change last spring. But it quickly reverted back to a more download-dependent model.
In comparison, Google Android Market’s charts are more immune to bots because the company’s ranking algorithm is more holistic and incorporates factors like whether users keep their apps installed. While there is criticism that this approach leads to less dynamic charts, there are ways to compensate. Apple can always open up more marketing space for newer or recently updated apps that are seeing higher engagement or stickiness.
“The entire industry needs to get away from this velocity discussion,” said Mihir Shah, the chief executive of Tapjoy, which ironically faced Apple’s wrath last year when its offer walls were banned for having undue influence on the charts. ”Offshore bots where a computer is gaming downloads to make users think an app is good is fundamentally damaging to all of us.”
February 14th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
[...] Download bots were the “well-known secret” of the app ecosystem Many of the biggest developers and marketing companies had been well-aware of the issue for months — if not years. I hadn’t had the time to go through and compile my notes until now, but here are some choice excerpts about the bots issue from last week. [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 11:24 pm
it is quite interesting to observe that some companies involved with incentivized downloads are actually explaining what’s wrong with the current system.
The current mobile ad ecosystem is a mess with lots of companies providing services that create artificial growth based on incentive, wrong promises and more…bots is just a small visible part of it.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:18 am
The bots actually took a lot of their business once incentivized installs were banned on iOS.
February 15th, 2012 at 1:54 am
yep. but the incentivized business is still alive and kicking and it is creating the same way a conflicting signal vs other networks providing organic non incentivized downloads
February 15th, 2012 at 4:34 am
So you mean to say that part of the download numbers that Apple likes to toot is actually smoke and mirrors and done by bots??? If that is the case, Apple should come clean and fess up….
February 15th, 2012 at 6:09 am
[...] this link: Download bots are a well-known secret of the iOS eco-system This entry was posted in Tyson Zinn and tagged android, charts, charts-on-ios, downloads, [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 6:38 am
[...] – regarded as the most popular discovery mechanism – are limited and gamed: as we saw recently many companies are using different systems through bots and or incentives to [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 6:41 am
[...] kaybedilmesine bile varacak sahte App Store sıralama servislerine karşı uyarmıştı.İlgili – Inside Mobile Apps Etiketler: app store, app store top 25, Apple, apple app store, indirme [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 7:08 am
It will be interesting to see what Apple does next, considering the top 8 apps in the app store are likely still using these bot services.
February 15th, 2012 at 8:08 am
[...] folosind “ferme” de roboti virtuali. Marii dezvoltatori de aplicatii pentru iOS au platit zeci de mii de dolari catre diverse companii ca promiteau sa aduca aplicatiile in primele locuri in [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 8:32 am
[...] Inside Mobile Apps brought up the issue at a conference it held, where developers admitted using marketing services involving bots. It appears that many developers might have known about the bots for months or possibly even years. [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 9:00 am
[...] their own apps and manipulate the App Store’s top 25 list, according to a new report from Inside Mobile Apps. The software has been in use for over 12 months to fraudulently promote iOS titles, and some [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 9:14 am
[...] to a recent report (via Inside Mobile Apps) some of these services manipulate ranking by using download bots. These are contributing to loads [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
[...] Kim-Mai Cutler, who moderated the excellent panel at Inside Social Apps about mobile app distribution, has finally written her follow up piece to the scandal, and she raises good points. [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 6:51 pm
[...] Kim-Mai Cutler, who moderated the excellent panel at Inside Social Apps about mobile app distribution, has finally written her follow up piece to the scandal, and she raises good points. [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
[...] 排名了，尤其在下載付費應用程式前就先看看介紹和評測等資料。 VIA Insidemobileapps 若有任何有iPhone / iPad 或 Android 上的疑問，請到我們的 Facebook [...]
February 16th, 2012 at 1:00 am
[...] Vía | Inside Mobile Apps [...]
February 17th, 2012 at 12:27 pm
The real shame in all of this is that the consumers are getting mislead about what’s really popular and useful. The app store model is wonderful for aggregating consumer attention and making it easy to purchase apps, but it is really falling short on the longer-term engagement and customer connections that are so crucial to traditional consumer marketplaces. Over the long run, we anticipate that more apps will rely upon having loyal and engaged customer bases, rather than just acquiring users over and over again and retaining a tiny percentage of them. Focusing on how to make something that consumers love and to develop experiences that are less casual in nature seems to be the long-term key here, instead of the intense focus on driving downloads that currently prevails.
February 17th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
[...] Download bots were the “well-known secret” of the app ecosystem [...]
February 28th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
[...] ser especialmente estrictos con esto. Pero como dicen, hecha la ley, hecha la trampa. Vía | Inside Mobile Apps Fuente: [...]
February 29th, 2012 at 5:00 am
[...] also remains to be seen what the effect of Apple’s crackdown on download bots will have on Fiksu’s download index for next month. A long tolerated “open secret”, [...]
March 9th, 2012 at 9:07 am
[...] started to turn them down, we think it really changed the market drastically for us.” (Bots are something I reported on a few weeks ago. They’re fake download farms that install app… millions of times to drive them up the charts. Apple recently cracked down on [...]
April 26th, 2012 at 1:30 am
[...] from iOS last year (and thank goodness they did, because now the Top lists in the App Store are completely pure). There is far more risk in Apple suddenly changing their policies and forcing app makers to [...]
April 28th, 2012 at 5:02 am
[...] 犯人は二人いる。ひとつは、クリスマスお正月シーズンからの落ち込みの続きであること。今はみんな、アプリを新たにダウンロードするというより、新しく買ったiPhoneで長い休日に山のようにダウンロードしたアプリを試してみるのに忙しいのだ。そしてもう一つの犯人は、Appleがダウンロードボットを撃退したことだ。ダウンロードボットとは、アプリを自動的に何万回もダウンロードするプログラムで、それを使ってアプリを上位ランクに入れるのだ。 [...]
May 16th, 2012 at 11:31 am
[...] on the free apps chart in the U.S. It’s likely the number has declined because of Apple’s crackdown on download bots, a tactic some developers used to artificially inflate their app’s position on the free app [...]
September 12th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
[...] While the information does mean that even apps far off the charts are able to generate a few downloads every month, the vast majority of App Sore downloads belong to the apps fortunate enough to appear on the highly visible top ranked paid, free and grossing app charts. Discoverability issues in the iTunes App Store have meant that some developers employ multi-million dollar app marketing budgets to ensure their apps are found. In the past, iOS developers have also tried to game the system through offer walls and download bots. [...]
October 3rd, 2012 at 11:08 am
[...] U.S. — a significantly higher figure that was being driven up by download bots. Once Apple banned the practice, the number of downloads required to chart app declined noticeably, falling by almost 15 percent [...]