Case Study: Miles achieves $1.1M in blocked fraudulent ad spend and 30X media partner growth with AppsFlyer's Protect360

Miles saves over $1 million in fraudulent ad spend by blocking fraud with Protect360

Miles, an all-in-one travel rewards app, was trying to scale user growth in the US and Japan with a one-person digital marketing team and low CAC. After testing new CPA-based media partners, Miles saw a sharp rise in bot-driven fraud (fraudulent installs up 57% week-over-week and in-app event fraud up 315%), which inflated costs and corrupted optimization data. AppsFlyer — and specifically its Protect360 product — was engaged when the AppsFlyer CSM flagged the spike.

AppsFlyer implemented a trial of Protect360 to automatically identify and block fraudulent installs and in‑app events in real time and via post-attribution rules. In the first month Protect360 blocked 439,375 fraudulent in‑app events and saved Miles about $1.1M in fraudulent ad spend; over six months fraud fell from 97% to 4% for non-organic in‑app events and install fraud dropped from 75% to 11%. Using AppsFlyer’s data and automated partner reporting, Miles confidently expanded from 2 to over 60 media partners while keeping billing reconciliation and acquisition quality under control.

Miles

Samantha Barton

Director of Growth