I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

我在谷歌应用广告上花了 220 美元，结果 60% 的安装量都是机器人

I run a small puzzle app called Dayzle. I’m a numbers guy, so a marketing optimization problem is right up my alley. Two weeks ago I turned on a Google Ads campaign for Android at CA$40 a day, with the goal set to installs. 我经营着一款名为 Dayzle 的小型益智应用。我是一个擅长处理数据的人，所以营销优化问题正合我意。两周前，我开启了一项针对 Android 平台的谷歌广告活动，每日预算为 40 加元，目标设定为“安装量”。

For the first few days it barely spent anything. I had a target cost per install of $1.50, and Google couldn’t find installs at that price. So, as a test, I removed the target. It immediately spent double my daily budget, CA$80, and reported 21 installs. I was excited. 最初几天，广告几乎没有产生任何支出。我设定的目标单次安装成本为 1.50 美元，但谷歌无法以该价格获取安装量。于是，作为测试，我取消了这一目标限制。广告支出随即翻倍，达到了每天 80 加元，并报告了 21 次安装。我当时很兴奋。

Then I checked my admin panel, which said 1. Turns out I didn’t need to be a numbers guy to see something didn’t add up. The panel had missed them because old versions of the app don’t report an install date. When I went into the raw analytics there were 21 new Android devices that day, and 20 of them were running an old version of the app that the Play Store had stopped serving days earlier. 随后我查看了管理后台，显示安装量仅为 1。事实证明，根本不需要什么数据分析能力就能看出不对劲。后台漏掉这些数据是因为旧版本的应用不会上报安装日期。当我查看原始分析数据时，发现那天确实有 21 台新的 Android 设备，其中 20 台运行的是 Play 商店几天前就已经停止分发的旧版本应用。

You can’t get an old version from Play, so these phones got the app from somewhere else, even though every one of them said Google Play was the installer. Each opened the app once, spent zero seconds on any screen, and never came back. Twenty-eight phone models across nineteen states, which is a lot of variety for twenty phones that all did exactly the same thing. 你无法从 Play 商店获取旧版本，所以这些手机是从其他地方下载的应用，尽管它们每一台都显示安装来源是 Google Play。每台设备都只打开了一次应用，在任何页面停留时间均为零秒，之后再也没有回来过。这 20 台手机涵盖了 19 个州的 28 种机型，对于 20 台行为完全一致的手机来说，这种多样性显得非常可疑。

Over the whole two weeks: 56 installs billed, 33 with that pattern, 7 more from countries the campaign wasn’t targeting, and 13 people. The 13 people finished 92 games between them, which is a nice signal that real people enjoyed what we’ve built. The 33 weren’t behaving like people, so I suspected a bot farm, and the analytics export bears it out. 在整个两周内：共计费 56 次安装，其中 33 次符合上述异常模式，7 次来自广告活动未覆盖的国家，仅有 13 次是真实用户。这 13 位用户总共完成了 92 局游戏，这是一个很好的信号，说明真实用户喜欢我们开发的产品。那 33 次安装的行为不像人类，所以我怀疑是机器人农场，而导出的分析数据也证实了这一点。

Google optimizes for whatever goal you give it, and my goal was installs. This farm would watch the shortest video in my ad group, not click it, and then install our app from a saved copy of the file instead of from the store, because that’s faster and Play might notice. Google counts a view followed by an install as a conversion, so the irony is that the more the farm “installed” our app, the better it looked to Google’s algorithm, which sent more of my ads to the farm, which installed it more. A loop that guaranteed my ad spend was wasted. 谷歌会根据你设定的目标进行优化，而我的目标是安装量。这个农场会观看我广告组中最短的视频，但不点击，然后从保存的文件副本中安装我们的应用，而不是从商店下载，因为这样更快，且能避免被 Play 商店察觉。谷歌将“观看后安装”计为一次转化，讽刺的是，农场“安装”我们应用的次数越多，在谷歌算法看来效果就越好，于是谷歌就会向该农场投放更多广告，从而导致更多的安装。这是一个注定浪费我广告费的死循环。

Where I am now: waiting on Google’s answer to the invalid-traffic form, and the campaign’s goal is now “won a puzzle” instead of “opened the app”. It’s low effort to make a script open an app and click around; it’s higher effort to make one solve a Sudoku. The idea is just to make us more expensive to farm than the next app. That’s probably decent protection for an app my size. Larger apps are worth the extra effort, and I’d guess they see a lot more of this than they know. 我现在的情况是：正在等待谷歌对“无效流量申诉表”的回复，同时将广告活动的目标从“打开应用”改为“完成一局益智游戏”。编写脚本让应用打开并点击几下成本很低；但要让脚本解开一道数独题则需要更高的成本。我的想法只是提高被“刷量”的成本，使其高于其他应用。对于我这种规模的应用来说，这或许是不错的保护措施。大型应用更值得投入额外成本去刷，我猜他们遇到的此类情况远比他们意识到的要多。

I’ll report back on the refund. So I guess this is my PSA: if you’re relying on Google’s install count for your ads, it’s a real number, but it’s definitely worth digging into. If a bot farm can find my tiny ad budget, it can definitely find yours. 我会后续跟进退款情况。所以我想这就是我的公开提醒：如果你依赖谷歌的安装量数据来评估广告效果，虽然那是一个真实的数字，但绝对值得深入挖掘。如果机器人农场能找到我这点微薄的广告预算，它们绝对也能找到你的。