Commenting on the news Li stated, “I am honored to have spoken at this prestigious event and look forward to Cheetah Mobile’s continued relationship with Microsoft to develop products that solve real-life pain points and increase efficiency for people and businesses.”

Cheetah Mobile and Microsoft have been working together since 2017, when it integrated Microsoft’s intelligent voice assistant Cortana into its popular launcher app, CM Launcher. Cortana not only allows CM Launcher users to easily control the app with voice commands, they can also use voice commands to make voice calls, read the news, create and manage events, set reminders and perform web searches, all without leaving the app.

Microsoft and Cheetah Mobile expanded their partnership in July 2018 with the release of Cheetah Translator, a portable translation device developed using text-to-speech and translation technology from Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) and OrionStar, a Cheetah Mobile-invested AI company. The device is light-weight and easy-to use, while providing accurate and reliable translation, making it the perfect accessory for travelers. Cheetah Translator operates on OrionStar’s self-developed Orion Voice OS, the number one smart voice OS in China, with a 30% market share. Orion Voice OS currently powers smart speakers from Xiaomi, Midea and Ximalaya, as well as Cheetah Mobile’s entire line of robotics products and smart devices.

Unlike similar translation devices that feature two or more buttons, Cheetah Translator’s one-button design reduces the number of operations required of users. Whether it is selecting the language, translating or changing volume, it can all be done with one button. In fact, the translation engine provided by Microsoft and OrionStar automatically detects which language is being spoken and translates accordingly without the need to manually switch between languages. It currently supports Chinese, English, Korean and Japanese, with more languages to be added soon.

Li continued, “The major advantage that Cheetah Mobile has in AI products is its combination of user thinking, product thinking and AI technologies. By focusing on users’ needs in specific scenarios, Cheetah Mobile uses the most suitable technology to solve those needs, and Cheetah Translator is the embodiment of this goal. There are no borders between machines and people anymore. Cheetah Mobile’s goal is to provide users with AI products that are truly intelligent and truly useful.”

Microsoft Shanghai Tech Summit was held at the Shanghai World Expo Center from October 24 to 27, 2018. The Summit brings together Microsoft‘s top global technology experts, famous domestic entrepreneurs, industry leaders, entrepreneurial pioneers and technology enthusiasts gather together to discuss hot topics, share the latest & most cutting-edge gains, the most competitive strategies and techniques, as well as industry solutions under digital transformation, to jointly improve business productivity and predict the development trend of the industry.

About Cheetah Mobile Inc.

Cheetah Mobile is a leading mobile Internet company with strong global vision. It has attracted hundreds of millions of monthly active users through its mobile utility products such as Clean Master and Cheetah Keyboard, casual games such as Piano Tiles 2, and live streaming product Live.me. The Company provides its advertising customers, which include direct advertisers and mobile advertising networks through which advertisers place their advertisements, with direct access to highly targeted mobile users and global promotional channels. The Company also provides value-added services to its mobile application users through the sale of in-app virtual items on selected mobile products and games. Cheetah Mobile is committed to leveraging its cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies to power its products and make the world smarter. It has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since May 2014.

About OrionStar

OrionStar is an AI company in China that is controlled by Fu Sheng, CEO and chairman of Cheetah Mobile. The company was established in September 2016 by a group of technology industry leaders and product specialists from Silicon Valley, Japan, Taiwan, Beijing, and Shenzhen. OrionStar has developed a complete robotics technology chain, including a voice-controlled operating system, Orion Voice OS, visual recognition technology, indoor mapping and navigation system, and a back-end robotics platform, Orion OS. OrionStar is committed to using AI technology to develop the next generation of ground-breaking technology products and free people from the burden of overly complicated tasks, make homes more intelligent and create a better world through technology.

For more information about Cheetah Mobile and its products, please visit www.cmcm.com

The post Cheetah Mobile Vice President Keynotes Microsoft Tech Summit 2018 in Shanghai appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

By Dale Lovell, Chief Digital Officer, ADYOULIKE

By definition, native advertising is a form of paid media where the advertisement is relevant to the consumer experience, integrated into the surrounding content and is not disruptive. Simply put, native advertisements look and feel like the content that surrounds them. The ads sit within the editorial feed sections of websites, and the ad works in the same way as existing editorial; for example, you normally will have to click on the content in order to interact with it.

Native advertising has experienced significant growth in recent years, as marketers have sought to break through the increasingly cluttered digital landscape. However, to date, marketers have treated native as just another format—another arrow in their digital advertising quivers. Quite frankly, this viewpoint sells native advertising short.

“Native advertising”—although the term comes from the advertisement matching the look and feel of the editorial surrounding it, in that it is native to the publication it sits on—is actually better used as a term to describe the advertising format that is indigenous—native—to online. Native advertising isn’t another digital ad format. It is the digital ad format.

Think about it. Banner ads were essentially adopted by early websites to replicate the standard ad blocks seen in newspapers. A banner says, “This is where the ads can sit—in these standard block units.” Video ads, even still today, are quite often repurposed TV ads. All are formats that came before the advent of the internet.

Native advertising is different. Like the digital medium itself, native ads take elements from other media, but use them correctly for the digital world. Native advertising is the first “native” advertising format of the digital world. We are barely 20 years into mass internet usage, and far, far less for mobile browsing. Native advertising is the format all future digital advertising will take.

Native advertising is in part a consequence of and reaction to some major digital consumer trends—mobile, social media, video, content, ad blocking, the decline in print and many smaller and subtler changes. It’s only when you look at the journey that digital has taken over the last 20 years that it all suddenly clicks into place. For some people, native advertising is the solution that digital publishing has been waiting for—the format that will transform the fortunes of struggling digital publishing business models and usher in a new golden age in publishing. For others it’s a symbol of the death of publishing as we know it, the death of editorial independence and the last-ditch—“dead cat bounce”—effort of an industry that has been searching for a business model for 20 years or more, and failing.

But native advertising is fundamentally not a revolution in advertising—despite what many vested interests may try and tell you. It’s an evolution. It is a medium born out of major changes in consumer habits online. It’s the evolution of advertising formats for a mobile-first world. It’s the evolution of advertising content for a world that is continuously engaging with the feed, where interruption is only OK if you do it in an entertaining or informative way. It’s the evolution of publishing and platform revenue models for publishers that can no longer afford to rely on dwindling returns from print. It’s the evolution of the newsroom and editorial jobs. It’s a technology that can actually help against ad blocking and help distribute the countless pieces of content brands that publishers are creating on a daily basis.

Native advertising will continue to influence and affect our daily lives for many years to come. In today’s era of privacy, particularly with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect on May 25, native advertising’s importance will be accelerated thanks to the inherent and overt value exchange it provides to the consumer. It behooves marketers to immerse themselves in the creative, technological and commercial aspects at play behind these ads. Going forward, they will not just represent an important part of the digital ad ecosystem. They very likely will represent its entirety.

The post Rethinking Native Advertising: Why It’s More Than Another Format appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Yet, the arrival of online trading has ensured that just about anyone can do this, now with a better chance of success. How has this method become so popular that it is seen as a mainstream option for just about every type of investor?

A big part of the success of the online approach to trading is how it has been marketed as an easy and enjoyable way of making money. This has blown away the traditional image that many people had about trading.

Clever New Technology

Marketing teams all around the world now know that people love to see great new technology at work. To help convince you that trading can be fun and modern, these sites use slick platforms that are a pleasure to work with.

You can typically pull up interesting graphs, useful statistics and all sorts of other handy information. This makes it is easy to feel like a professional no matter when and how you trade.

Of course, at its heart, this process is still pretty much the same as it ever was. The basic concept of buying and selling stock or other commodities hasn’t really changed but the ways of doing it have definitely moved with the times.

Free Demo Accounts

We all love to try something for free, especially when it could make us money. To this effect, marketing teams have realized that demo trading accounts are an excellent idea. They give newcomers the chance to get comfortable with the idea of trading without risking their own money.

With a demo trading account, it is possible to try trading and choose the level of account you need accordingly. The type of account you choose then determines how much you can trade and the level of support you receive.

Putting your own money at risk is thrilling – but using a demo account first makes it seems like a natural progression rather than a leap into the unknown.

Mobile Trading

Mobile marketing is a huge part of any brand’s approach, shown by the fact that in 2016 just over half of all digital advertising budgets went on mobile ads. And it makes double sense to target potential traders with it: most people now have a mobile device close to them all day long, it makes a lot of sense to trade with one, too, and it is incredibly simple to stay on top of the markets all day.

All of this makes trading more accessible and enjoyable for lots of people who might not have otherwise tried it. Anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to invest in this way now knows that it is simple to give it a try.

The post Online Trading Has Been Cleverly Marketed and Its Popularity is Increasing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Pat McCormack, Vice President, Publisher Sales Americas – Oath

True in-app header bidding is finally here. This is the year that developers finally begin to bring the benefits of header bidding — a way to have a unified, simultaneous auction from all of the advertisers bidding on in-app inventory — into the monetization stack for their apps.

 Over the last several years, the mobile app ecosystem has had a front row seat to header bidding’s impact and evolution across desktop and mobile web. They saw  savvy publishers achieve a greater level of control and efficiency from their ad stack by pulling demand partners out of the waterfall and calling all of them at the same time. They saw the market respond with off-the-shelf  “wrappers” to get rid of the added latency from having so much additional partner code on the page. And, most recently, they saw header bidding evolve server-side.

 This perspective has helped developers learn how to be successful and start with a more advanced solution on day one. And for developers considering header bidding “container” solutions, which manage all header bidding partners a developer wants to use, their decisions need to be built around a few guiding principles. Here are three of the most critical.

Middleman for the Tech, ONLY

On a basic level, the role of the container is to help developers run a more efficient ads business. The container is a framework. It’s responsible for paving a road between demand partner and publisher.  But publishers should be able to have direct commercial relationships with the SSPs and ad networks they choose to sell to without the container taking a cut of it — unless there is value being added to the request (for example in the form of data). Otherwise, the road shouldn’t carry a fee. Think of a freeway rather than a tollway. Further, the container should not impede how the developer sells their data. Want some of your partners to be able to store/decision upon your data for 180 days? As the technology pipes, the container should let developers have freedom to do the deals they want. Too many solutions don’t do this.

Connect to Everyone

In pursuing the goal of making it easier for a developer to run their ad business, the container should focus on maximizing the channels that the inventory can be sold through. This means a commitment to building connections to the SSPs and ad networks that a publisher chooses to work with. When choosing the right container partner, it’s in the developer’s best interest to consider not just the connections the container has built today, but also those that may need to be built in the future. Given how quickly new players in the space can pop up and make an impact, there will almost certainly be a need to add a connection down the road. On average, the 500 largest publishers in the U.S. use about six vendors to sell their inventory. I encourage all developers to dig a level deeper in their diligence on prospective container partners and understand HOW the downstream connections are made from the container to the other SSPs/ad networks. This way, when the day comes that the developer wants to do a deal with a hot new ad network, they know the work will be minimal and can start working with them ASAP.

Transparency is the Default

There is a level of trust inherent to any strategic partnership. In this case, the developer is trusting that the container will be conducting the unified auction in the developer’s best interest. Now, I believe you should trust — but you should also verify. Does your container partner have ways for you to audit the auctions? How do you confirm that the impression is always going to the highest bidder? Or that the container is not advantaging their own demand, which happens too frequently? Asking these questions and understanding how the container is thinking about them can provide valuable insight into the philosophy guiding their product and should be part of the overall diligence. More transparency is always be better — and those vendors willing to be open about their practices are always the better option.

App developers are ready and excited to capitalize on the yield-maximizing benefits of a unified auction the way desktop publishers already have. Having seen the evolution of header bidding, app developers are now armed with information on exactly what to look for as they evaluate potential partners. The future here is bright.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat McCormack is Vice President, Publisher Sales Americas, at Oath, a Verizon subsidiary and the parent company of Yahoo, AOL, HuffPost, and other dynamic brands that serve a combined billion global consumers. Prior, Pat was Vice President of Publisher Sales for ONE by AOL: Publishers, at AOL Platforms, the advertising technology division of AOL. Before AOL, Pat was Vice President of Publisher Sales at Millennial Media, which AOL acquired in 2015. He held the same role at Nexage, which Millennial Media acquired a year earlier. Pat has also driven mobile ad sales strategies in senior roles at The Weather Channel and National Football League.

The post Mobile Developers: 3 Keys to Picking the Best Header Bidding Partner appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The feature is currently in limited preview for Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customers.

This means that organizations will soon have the option to enable employees and customers to sign in to an Azure AD joined device with no password, simply by using the Security Key by Yubico to get single sign-on to all Azure AD based applications and services.

Yubico is demonstrating the power of passwordless login with the Security Key by Yubico and Windows systems at this week’s RSA Conference 2018, booth #S2241.

“Microsoft’s FIDO2 implementation using the Security Key by Yubico is just the beginning of a passwordless world; there are no limits as to where this technology can take us,” said Stina Ehrensvard, CEO and Founder, Yubico. “Passwords have been an age-old pain point for both individuals and organizations, and now, we have developed a unified open standard that can finally solve the problem at scale.”

The post Yubico Delivers Passwordless Login for Enterprise Authentication on Windows 10 Devices appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Beyond Spots & Dots has always been on the forefront of digital technology. From working with Google as a Google Partner and effectively advertising on the latest social media platforms to building award-winning websites, Beyond Spots & Dots provides dynamic digital solutions for its clients,” a provided release explains.

“Beyond Spots & Dots prides itself on being a trailblazer in the world of marketing and advertising, and we decided to take our services to the next level by leveraging location-based marketing strategies. Over the last year mobile data technology and how it is applied to digital advertising has evolved to a point where we are now confident in offering these services to small and medium-sized businesses, nonprofits and educational institutions on a local level. Clients will benefit from these additional programmatic tactics by optimizing where their audiences are, directly communicating with them through display and video, and measuring whether those ads result in physical visits to their businesses,” said Melanie Querry, Founder and President of Beyond Spots & Dots.

To learn more about the company and its offerings, click here.

The post Beyond Spots & Dots Rolls Out Programmatic Tactics appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from David Sendroff, CEO, Forensiq by Impact

Ad fraud is an issue known to almost every digital advertiser and agency, thanks in large part to industry-wide efforts to educate the buy side and combat the issue. In fact, bad actors stole more than $6.5 billion from advertisers in 2017, according to the Association of National Advertisers. Now a new study conducted by Forrester for AppsFlyer found that mobile app marketers were exposed to between $700 million to $800 million in ad fraud in Q1 2018, an increase of 30% compared to the same period a year ago. The data points to the share of fraudulent app installs increasing by 15%.

Surely, as more ad spending is poured into mobile formats, we see the nature of ad fraud is changing dramatically. However, while many marketers have come to understand the issue from a desktop perspective over the last few years, the mobile platform presents bad actors with a completely different way of defrauding advertisers, app makers, and consumers alike.

An industry-wide lack of understanding of this unique landscape has created an environment ripe for fraudsters. Bad actors gravitate towards less-understood channels and take advantage of their complexities and the industry’s knowledge gap to defraud advertisers. Accordingly, mobile is the new battleground.

Bad actors perpetrate fraud in the mobile world with far more sophistication, which makes it crucial that everyone involved in the ecosystem make themselves aware of what fraud looks like and how it works. Here is a look at two categories of fraud in which we are seeing new variations of mobile in-app fraud emerge:

Impression Fraud

Fraud happens on mobile devices for many of the same reasons it happens on desktop. Programmatic technology, or the automated process of moving an ad from purchase to delivery, certainly plays a role in making mobile environments vulnerable to fraud.

Impression fraud occurs when fraudsters inflate the number of apparent users their apps attract, the number of ads they deliver to a given user, and the price they can demand per ad. And while the fraud techniques that are pervasive on the desktop web are also pervasive on the mobile web, in-app environments pose different threat levels. Since an app (unlike a web-page) is a discrete piece of software capable of altering a user’s device (e.g., by preventing it from sleeping) and reporting personal data (e.g., the user’s geographic coordinates), in-app environments are quite distinct from either desktop or mobile web. Therefore, the new types of fraud that are popping up are unique to the in-app environment.

Bad actors can run armies of fake devices, known as device farms, to make it seem like they have far more real users than they do. They can also program apps to request ads at much higher rates than normal, hijacking legitimate devices to transform them into impression-generating machines that hide the majority of impressions from view. Finally, to increase CPMs, fraudsters will use fake metadata, such as falsified location information, to deceive programmatic buyers into thinking that their app is desirable or that their app visitors (whether they are real or fake) are high-value users.

In order to evade detection, fraudsters use a number of spoofing tactics, in particular spoofing the device and app information. This allows the fraudster to fake or misrepresent the device information sent through a bid request, or make it appear that the fraud is coming from another app.

Install attribution Fraud

The impression fraud described above bears similarities to desktop fraud. But mobile is different in that marketers are often trying to get new users to install an advertisers’ app directly onto a device, and the install market grew to $7.6 billion in 2017, according to eMarketer. Attributing this success is a huge part of the performance marketing landscape, and it creates an opportunity for fraudsters to capture some of this growing market.

In a typical customer conversion path, the consumer is exposed to a number of touchpoints before making an install. Attribution models decide how much credit to allocate to each touchpoint for driving the app install. Install attribution fraud is when unscrupulous partners or affiliates receive credit – and the associated revenue – even though they played no part in driving the app install.

They’re able to do this because many advertisers still focus on the simplest of models: last-click attribution. The fraudsters inject a fake click event into the user’s conversion path, ideally right before the install, so that they receive credit and steal revenue. Bad actors are even able to take credit for organic installs – those that happen without the user being exposed to a branded message – something the advertiser others would not have had to pay for.  

Advertisers can do a few things to protect their brands against mobile ad fraud. First, they can educate themselves, and demand clarity and transparency from their ad tech providers and fraud vendors, in particular. That means asking the right questions such as: Do they have a track record in handling mobile fraud? Do they examine the entire marketing funnel for fraud? Are there viewability measurements based on valid human traffic vs. invalid or automated traffic? And are they looking at all types of spoofing such as device ID, location, and hardware spoofing, for starters. Those are just a few of the questions advertisers should be asking.   In addition, advertisers need to monitor incoming traffic and ad data to ensure humans not bots are viewing ads. Establishing a cross-device strategy is also important because most of us use three or more different devices.

The post The Unique Battleground of Mobile Fraud appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from Dave Bell, CEO of Gummicube.

When you’re searching for the right app in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, what are your eyes immediately drawn to? While everyone is different, most can’t help but divert their attention to what instantly catches their eye. In the app stores, this typically requires having unique and attractive creatives.

Why Creatives are Important

Creatives such as an app’s screenshots and icon are a few of the most important on-screen pieces of real estate to convince and entice users. At a quick glance, an app’s creatives is the main space that sets them apart from the sea of apps and their competitors in search results.

It’s important to keep in mind that a user only spends 3-5 seconds considering an app in the app stores. On the topic of seasonality, a sure-fire way of distinguishing an app from their competition is by implementing seasonality into their creatives by following App Store Optimization (ASO) best practices. Users definitely do notice and appreciate when apps put the extra effort in making graphics relatable to the upcoming season or holiday.

Keep Up with the Times

Targeting seasonal keywords just isn’t enough to attract users when they are quickly skimming through the app stores. Similar to commercial businesses like Target and Starbucks that alter their marketing strategies for different seasons, apps should also make key changes to their app listing. Incorporating seasonality into creatives could be the secret weapon your app needs to increase conversion rates.

Take advantage of what app consumers will be looking for during the different seasons and holidays, and if applicable, cater your app to those interests and aesthetics. Consider seasons like winter and summer – developers can make changes to incorporate various elements that highlight the current season and attract users.

Winter

When the weather starts to take a chilly turn and snowflakes fall as an introduction to the winter months, the world in your gaming or shopping app can mirror that. For example, for a gaming app, consider changing your app’s creatives to incorporate snow or a colder terrain. For a shopping app, think of what a consumer looks for and can relate to: warm clothing in the forefront, colors evocative of the holiday, holiday ornaments in the background, etc.

The holidays are also a favorable time for targeting more users. For instance, some popular retail apps changed their icon promote Black Friday sales while others incorporated holiday themed elements to target the holiday season.

Take for example, how Hustle Castle features the main character in their icon with a Santa hat. By incorporating this simple, yet relevant, element to their icon, they will attract users who already feel festive.

At the start of the new year, consumers are looking to better themselves. Productivity apps or fitness apps can cater their creatives with catchy new Call to Actions to those looking to meet goals for the new year.

In February, love is in the air. Valentine’s Day is a great time to take advantage of those looking to find love or create memories with their significant other. Dating apps and photo apps can target new users during this time by displaying creatives that emphasize love and dating.

The photo app below features romantic pictures of couples to cater to those who want to create lasting memories with their loved ones during Valentine’s Day. Not only does the developer include relevant themes and colors in all of the creatives, but they portray elements of love and happiness to appeal to the user’s emotions.

Summer

Even though holidays are few and far between during the summer, people still get excited about everything it represents – warm weather, barbecues, vacations and so much more. While retail apps can utilize their creatives to promote swimsuit season or Memorial Day sales, travel apps can target the high volume of users who are going on summer vacation.

Even gaming apps can incorporate symbols of summer in their creatives and gameplay. The game featured below employs warm colors and flip flops in their screenshots to emulate the hot weather associated with summer. 

Relevance is Key

Staying relevant to users is key to improving conversion rates year around. Consumers’ expectations are constantly changing and evolving, meaning an app’s creative assets should reflect user trends and behavior and the current season.

Users will spend just a matter of seconds looking at an app. As the seasons change, developers need to utilize ASO best practices to ensure that both their icon and screenshots are relevant, eye-catching, and unique to differentiate themselves from competitors.

The post The Power of Incorporating Seasonality for Creatives appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Available for public comment through May 3, 2018, the technical guidelines provide instructions on best practices for delivering targeted ads, as well as controlling ad frequency and rotation across a wide variety of disparate smart TVs, connected devices, and other OTT systems.

In order to be compliant with these guidelines, devices and apps must store and send the following parameters as part of any ad request:

• An identifier for advertising (IFA) – required, unless the user has opted in to limit ad tracking, an IFA must be a unique value that is completely disconnected from a hardware ID, MAC address, IMEI, or IP address
• An associated IFA type – identifying the source of the IFA, whether device-generated, publisher-provided, or temporary
• Limit ad tracking (LAT) – an opt-out mechanism to respect the user’s privacy choices

The guidelines also feature specific advice and intelligence for consumer electronics manufacturers, OTT app publishers, and ad/measurement platforms to address the needs of each of these stakeholder groups.

“After linear TV, more Americans watch video content on OTT than on VOD or DVR, and the medium is skyrocketing,” said Dennis Buchheim, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab. “The traditional semi-persistent cookie we are accustomed to using as an identifier on browsers isn’t at play across OTT systems, so we need to deploy other types of identifiers to ensure that ad experiences are optimal for consumers. These guidelines will direct stakeholders down the path of best practices to allow OTT to grow and evolve as a significant advertising platform.”

“Between smart TVs, connected devices, and other OTT systems out in the marketplace—all with varied approaches to identification—we’re looking at a ‘Tower of Babel’ challenge,” said J. Allen Dove, CTO, SpotX, and member of the IAB Tech Lab OTT Technical Working Group. “The new IAB Tech Lab guidelines solve these challenges and improve overall user experience. We are hoping that others in the industry also contribute their input to make these recommendations even more effective.”

After public comment concludes, the IAB Tech Lab OTT Technical Working Group will evaluate and incorporate the feedback received and release a final version. To review the proposed guidelines, click here.

The post First Look: IAB Tech Lab Releases ‘Guidelines for Identifier for Advertising (IFA) on OTT Platforms’ for Public Comment appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

These apps, which openly acknowledge requesting various types of user data for advertising purposes, were found in more than 70% of enterprise environments. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg as there is a much larger number of apps lurking in the enterprise that collect user data such as calendar, Bluetooth and photos—and are not upfront about their intentions.

Of the more than 2 million iOS apps scanned by Appthority, the 24,000 flagged were just the ones that openly ask users for access permission to deeper device functionality for advertising purposes. In fact, over 98% of enterprises have apps in their environments that display ads. These results suggest that data leakage from ad-supported apps is a much bigger problem than most enterprises realize.

“As a pioneer in the mobile security space, Appthority has long known that advertising within apps like Facebook is common and comes with risks, such as the leaking of users’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII),” said Seth Hardy at Appthority. “However, the Cambridge Analytica exposure made us wonder how many of these apps are directly accessing and using personal information for advertising.”

The reality is that apps that access data for advertising pose additional risks to enterprises and users compared to apps that access data solely for in-app functions. For example, ad-supported apps typically include third-party advertising libraries, which are not managed by the original app that employees trust and install. Therefore, information accessed by these advertising providers is usually not monitored or regulated by the original apps, users or by enterprises.

What’s more, ad-supported apps often access data without any real functional justification. When accessing data, mobile apps have to state a reason for wanting the access. Accessing data for in-app functions is a justifiable reason, but the iOS apps found were accessing data specifically for advertising purposes. This practice poses an important question about data access in enterprise environments: does the benefit of using the app outweigh the cost of losing control of user or enterprise data?

Because the app economy is heavily supported by ads, eliminating all apps that collect and use data for advertising from a device or enterprise environment is often not possible. But, the report also provides recommendations to users and enterprises to safeguard their data including, among others, being selective about granting permission to access data and deploying a Mobile Threat Defense solution to ensure visibility into and remediation of ad-supported and other app risks.

Register to download the full report here.

The post New Appthority Report Finds Tens of Thousands of Ad-Supported Apps Are Collecting Excessive Data appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.