What is incentivised traffic?
Incentivised traffic is installs or in-app actions from users who receive a reward for completing them. The reward might be cash, points, gift cards or in-game currency. It is also spelled incentivized, and is sometimes called rewarded or paid-to-install traffic.
How it differs from install fraud
- Fraud: no genuine user behind the install or event, for example click injection, bots or SDK spoofing.
- Incentivised traffic: a real person installs and acts, but because of the reward rather than interest in the app.
- The grey area: undisclosed incentivised traffic sold as normal performance traffic. It is often a form of affiliate fraud, because you are paying for something other than what you bought.
Signals to look for
- Very fast opens: users following reward instructions open the app straight away, so click-to-install time is unusually short.
- IP repetition: many installs from the same IP, often from people completing offers in the same place.
- Stops after the rewarded step: a sign-up completed, then nothing. Retention and revenue per install fall far below your other sources.
- Sub-publisher concentration: volume coming from a small number of sub-sources inside an affiliate network.
Why it matters
- Wasted budget: you pay full price for users unlikely to return.
- Misleading optimisation: if rewarded sign-ups are sent back to ad networks as conversions, bidding learns from the wrong users.
- Skewed reporting: cohorts look healthy on installs and sign-ups, then collapse on retention.
How to handle it
- Agree terms up front: state in your affiliate contract whether incentivised traffic is allowed and how it is priced.
- Judge on deeper events: pay or optimise on retention, deposits or purchases, not on the rewarded step.
- Tag before acting: because the users are real, flag and review first instead of rejecting outright.
How Linkrunner does this
In Fraud Control, rules run as Tag only first, so suspicious installs stay visible in reports and can be reviewed by source before any postbacks are withheld. In one case in Linkrunner data, a timing rule flagged installs from a fintech app's affiliate, yet about half still signed up, which pointed to paid-to-install users rather than fake devices. See how mobile install fraud is detected.