Click Spam is the fraudulent activity where organic conversions are hijacked (stolen) and made to look like the fraudster's own affiliate traffic by overloading the attribution system (the platform attributing clicks to conversions) with high amounts of clicks.
Statistically, some of the fake clicks will match organic traffic and they will be attributed to the fraudster.
Link to a prewritten Email Answer to Affiliates.
For more general information please visit the links below
https://venturebeat.com/2016/01/02/install-fraud-is-threatening-the-app-economy/
https://venturebeat.com/2016/01/17/the-complex-problem-of-click-spamming/
Live ClickSpam
To provide Realtime ClickSpam Detection we have developed an algorithm that provides immediate results to ClickSpam Conversions. The underlying logic is similar but slightly less accurate. Live ClickSpam can be combined with the existing ClickSpam Filter.
Advanced Reason: Abnormal Session Time Distribution
Marks Conversions where the majority of the traffic has excessively long session times.
The session time for every conversion is measured and the percentage of how much of the traffic is above the threshold is calculated. If more than the specified percentage of conversions have a session time over the threshold they are marked as Click Spam. This looks at all conversions to calculate the percentage. If 1 conversion is over the threshold nothing happens, if less than the specified percentage of conversions are above the threshold again nothing happens, if equal or more conversions than the percentage are above the threshold then conversions with a long session time get marked.
Normal Session Time Distributio (Mobile App Traffic)
Abnormal Session Time Distribution (Mobile App Traffic)
To reproduce this reason go to the selected source (affiliate, product, partner and time frame) inside the fraud report, click on Fraud Profile, and then go to Session Time Distribution.
You should notice conversions are not coming in the 1st hour as expected but are rather randomly distributed throughout the day or throughout multiple days as a result of fake clicks being attributed to conversions at random times.
The limits for abnormal session time distribution can be defined inside Integration > Filters > Advanced Mode ON > Click Spam Detection > Abnormal Session Time Distribution.