作者: Shehroze Farooqi , Álvaro Feal , Tobias Lauinger , Damon McCoy , Zubair Shafiq
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摘要: "Incentivized" advertising platforms allow mobile app developers to acquire new users by directly paying install and engage with apps (e.g., create an account, make in-app purchases). Incentivized installs are banned the Apple App Store discouraged Google Play because they can manipulate store metrics counts, appearance in top charts). Yet, many organizations still offer incentivized services for Android apps. In this paper, we present first study understand ecosystem of campaigns its broader ramifications through a series measurements. We identify that require perform tasks targeting manipulation wide variety user engagement daily active users, session lengths) revenue. Our results suggest these artificially inflated be effective improving as well helping attract funding from venture capitalists. also indicates lax enforcement Store's existing policies prevent behaviors. It further motivates need stricter policing campaigns. proposed measurements leveraged potential policy violations.