Go2Joy blocks 90% of affiliate marketing fraud with Airbridge's Fraud Prevention

Introduction

Launched in 2017, Go2Joy is Vietnam’s leading hotel booking app, connecting over 10,000 partners with flexible booking options, including hourly, overnight, and long-term stays. With a user-friendly interface and attractive promotions, Go2Joy caters to the needs of travelers in a high-potential niche market. The app stands out for its flexibility and ability to help partners maximize room occupancy, attracting millions of users and securing $6.1 million in funding from international investors such as SV Investment and HB Investments. Go2Joy leverages affiliate marketing to expand customer reach, optimize advertising costs, and improve conversion rates. This approach allows them to pay only for actual bookings while utilizing their partner network to enhance brand awareness and drive revenue growth effectively.

Overview

Go2Joy, Vietnam’s leading hourly and overnight hotel booking platform, has enhanced its affiliate marketing operations with the support of Airbridge. By leveraging advanced multi-channel measurement and attribution tools, Go2Joy identified tracking gaps in organic traffic that had previously gone unnoticed when using their old MMPs, impacting campaign performance and overall revenue contribution.

Recognizing these inefficiencies, Go2Joy swiftly transitioned to Airbridge’s solution, which provided advanced features within a single dashboard—without additional fees or hidden costs—ultimately reducing MMP expenses by 50%. Moreover, with Airbridge’s automated fraud detection tools and Fraud Validation Rules, Go2Joy successfully reduced fraudulent installs by 90%. This allowed them to reallocate resources more efficiently, resulting in a 10% increase in real installs and more accurate reporting, further strengthening their position as a market leader in online hotel booking.

Challenges

Preventing Ad Fraud

Go2Joy faced significant challenges in accurately measuring the effectiveness of its affiliate marketing campaigns and preventing ad fraud. With a diverse network of partners and advertising campaigns running across multiple platforms—including websites, apps, and social media—data was often fragmented and inconsistent. This lack of cohesion made it difficult to track the user journey and accurately determine conversion sources.

As a result, budget allocation became inefficient, with resources wasted on campaigns or channels that failed to deliver high value. Additionally, ad fraud tactics such as click fraud (fake clicks) and install fraud (fraudulent installs) posed a serious threat, distorting data, inflating costs, and reducing the ability to optimize campaigns effectively.

Transitioning Between MMP Solutions

Go2Joy’s marketing team needed a new MMP solution to replace outdated platforms that were both costly and lacked built-in fraud prevention within the same package. The ideal solution would ensure a seamless transition while maintaining stable campaign measurement, leveraging data from the previous platform without disruptions, and optimizing marketing strategies with accurate, real-time tracking.

Solutions

Unifying Multi-Channel Attribution Data

Airbridge provides a user-friendly unified dashboard that enables Go2Joy to track key metrics such as installs, CPI, ROAS, and active users in real-time. Notably, Airbridge offers hourly raw data, including information on operating systems, device types, and countries, accessible via API at no additional cost. This seamless data access has significantly simplified tracking and analysis for Go2Joy’s marketing team, reducing manual effort and cutting MMP costs by 50% compared to their previous platform.

Leveraging Fraud Validation Rules

Go2Joy maximized the Abnormal Install report from Airbridge, which provides user-level raw data powered by AI-driven insights. This report is not only automated, fast, and accurate but also user-friendly, making it highly accessible for Go2Joy’s marketing team. Unlike other MMPs that require manual data input and tracking, Airbridge significantly reduces the time and effort needed for fraud detection. This allows Go2Joy to focus on strategic planning and campaign performance improvements instead of getting bogged down in complex data analysis.

Thanks to this, Go2Joy can quickly detect anomalies such as multiple installs from the same device, suspicious reinstallation activities, or touchpoints that do not lead to any specific in-app actions. These detailed insights have enabled Go2Joy to make timely and accurate decisions, optimize marketing campaigns, and effectively protect its advertising budget.

"One of the key reasons we chose Airbridge was its transparent and all-inclusive pricing. Unlike other MMPs, where we had to pay extra for fraud prevention tools, Airbridge provides everything upfront—precise attribution, detailed reporting, and advanced fraud detection—without any hidden fees. This has made budgeting predictable and allowed us to optimize campaign performance efficiently and sustainably." Pham Thai Son. Head of Marketing

After identifying potential risks, Go2Joy worked closely with Airbridge’s Customer Success team to establish Fraud Validation Rules tailored to its campaign needs. These rules allow for flexible customization and real-time fraud monitoring through a suite of specialized tools, enabling swift and precise detection and handling of suspicious activities.

To completely prevent SDK Spoofing, Go2Joy implemented SDK Signature, ensuring that suspicious app events are not attributed, maintaining the integrity and accuracy of measurement data.

Additionally, Go2Joy—a platform focused on the Vietnamese market—can now identify suspicious IP addresses from other countries using data from the Abnormal Install report. With Airbridge's IP Blocklisting feature, Go2Joy can easily filter out traffic from foreign IP addresses, minimizing wasted ad spend on irrelevant sources and optimizing budget allocation for more effective campaigns.

Beyond this, Go2Joy can customize fraud prevention levels based on factors such as device type, country, and language. They can flexibly choose between flagging fraudulent activities or completely removing attribution for suspicious conversions. This flexibility allows them to develop effective budget protection strategies, minimizing the risks of ad fraud while maximizing efficiency—all within Airbridge’s Conversion Traffic feature.

Go2Joy also monitors the time delay between a user's ad click and their first app open, providing a clear overview to identify and filter out unreliable Click-to-Install Time (CTIT) touchpoints—a crucial measure against common fraud techniques like Click Spamming. By benchmarking their data against market standards using Airbridge’s Lag Time Report, Go2Joy can optimize app performance speed, enhance user experience, and ensure better ad campaign efficiency.

Seamless MMP Transition with Airbridge

To ensure a smooth and uninterrupted transition from its previous MMP solution, Airbridge provided Go2Joy with a full suite of attribution tools and processes. With Airbridge’s backfill ID feature, Go2Joy could retain historical data while avoiding duplicate attribution for the same installs. Additionally, they could clearly differentiate between new and existing orders, leveraging Airbridge’s full range of advanced features—all within a single, transparent pricing package with no hidden costs.

Results

Airbridge has transformed Go2Joy’s marketing operations, improving measurement accuracy, fraud prevention, and data management. Previously, Go2Joy’s affiliate marketing campaigns faced inefficiencies, as pausing campaigns only reduced revenue by 2%, yet significantly cut advertising costs. With Airbridge, they eliminated up to 90% of fraudulent installs while achieving a 10% increase in legitimate installs.

By utilizing Airbridge’s comprehensive tools and features, Go2Joy realized they had been over-focusing on measuring existing users, allowing organic traffic from new users to be hijacked through Install Hijacking and Click Spamming. With Airbridge’s support, Go2Joy was able to refine campaign strategies, make data-driven decisions, and shift affiliate partners toward retargeting, ultimately reducing unnecessary payouts while improving attribution efficiency. This decision not only protected their ad budget but also boosted sustainable growth, all while cutting MMP costs by 50% compared to their previous provider.

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