Truth about Appodeal fraud. My investigation

Beware mobile developers!

I am ex-employee of AppoDeal. Here’s my report of digging inside the Appodeal’s internals.
http://www.appodeal.com claims to be an ad revenue optimization tool.

They claim that revenue will raise up to 3x times. I signed as a test account and found that actual revenue was reduced by 30% comparing to my Admob mediation services.

So I started to dig.
I used tcpdump/tcpflow/wireshark combined with some mitm tools (like Fiddler) and observed my app behaviour to prove the fraud.
(literally by filming actual app’s screens and counting banners on the device / comparing these real numbers to the statistics taken from the Appodeal)
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
– YOUR APP WILL GET BANNED FROM APP STORE IF APPLE/GOOGLE FINDS ABOUT IT!
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!

2. 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.

There’re better programmatic ad-networks out there, work with them.