Business ProfileforTapjoy

Tapjoy was brought to the BBB's attention in August 2020 and the review of the company was complete in February 2021. Based on BBB files, this company had a pattern of complaints on file from consumers stating they did not receive promised reward points for completed offers.

A letter was sent to the company requesting they address the above issues, as well as explain the rewards process, protocols that have been put in place since the company’s settlement with the FTC and customer service response times.

The company responded as follows:

Tapjoy appreciates this opportunity to address the concerns raised by consumers and the BBB, and to explain the rewards process, the protocols put in place since the resolution of the FTC investigation, and customer support response times.

As background, Tapjoy’s platform supports three-way value exchanges between the publishers of free-to-play mobile apps, the consumers who are users of those apps, and advertisers who want to reach those users. The advertisers set the terms of the offer; the users choose whether to engage with the offer; the advertisers report to Tapjoy when a user completes an offer’s requirements; and when Tapjoy receives that report, Tapjoy sends the signal to the publisher that the in-app virtual currency reward should be delivered to the user’s account. (Virtual currency here refers to the in-game currency used to play a given app, similar to Monopoly money, which can have various names such as diamonds, points, gems, gold, or even cat food, depending on the theme and objectives of the game.) 

What Tapjoy offers to consumers is the ability to receive in-app virtual currency rewards in exchange for engaging with third-party advertiser offers. As a result, the only category of user support request or complaint that Tapjoy would receive would relate to delivery of rewards, because consumers understand that the apps (in which the in-app virtual currency is delivered) are owned by third-party publishers, and that the products and services offered in the third-party ad offers are owned by the third-party advertisers. Tapjoy offers customer support to users for those instances when a user believes that they have earned a reward but it hasn’t been received. Users can submit their tickets by following the instructions here.

Rewards Process

Tapjoy reaches approximately 1.4 billion mobile device users around the world; in 2020, we had over 100M successful conversions on our platform. Only a small percentage reached out to our Customer Service team. There are several reasons as to why these users may have not have received their rewards: 

Reward not earned because offer requirements are not met. The advertiser is responsible for setting the requirements for completing an offer and describing them in the offer instructions and/or the landing page a user reaches. Even with a clear description, some users still get confused about what the offer requires and whether they have completed it. For example, some advertisers will have multiple offers running for the same mobile game that require you to reach different levels or level types: a game publisher may run two offers relating to the same game - one offer that requires you to reach ‘Player Level 25’ (in exchange for a reward of 1,000 coins) and another offer that requires you to reach ‘Castle Level 14’ (in exchange for a reward of 400 coins). A user might complete one of those requirements and be rewarded, but still file a ticket because they did not get the larger reward that is associated with the other requirement (which they did not complete). Or, a merchant might run one offer requiring a minimum purchase (e.g., $20), and a user may submit a ticket but, on review, the user’s purchase did not meet the minimum requirement. These are just examples of users who do not get rewarded because the reward was not earned, meaning they have not completed all the requirements of the advertiser who posted the offer. 

Not all rewards are instantaneous, because not all advertisers report offer completions in real-time. It can take the advertiser (or its measurement service) some time to notify Tapjoy that the user has earned the reward. For example, some advertisers send reward data right away (in almost real-time), while others wait until they have a batch of updates and then send them all together at once. Advertiser offers that involve batch updates typically note this on the offer instructions page, but a user might not notice that and submit a ticket if the reward didn’t appear right away.

Technical reasons. There could be several technical reasons as to why a user is not rewarded, such as not having a working data connection. 

Attribution from a third-party tracking platform. Attribution in advertising means verifying which ad network gets credited for a user seeing an advertisement and then downloading the advertised app and engaging with that offer. If an advertiser has an offer running on multiple ad networks, and the user engaged with that offer on several different ad networks, the user conversion may have actually been credited to another platform. For example, if they saw an offer on Tapjoy, and later saw an ad for the same app on Facebook, and then installed the app, it’s possible that Facebook could get credited for the install. We explain this in our User FAQ and a blog post here.

User fraud. Most people are trustworthy and honest, but nonetheless some users try to take advantage of a perceived opportunity to get something for nothing by filing a fraudulent support request. 

Due to risk rules or user quality history. Sometimes a user triggers a risk rule (intended to prevent fraud), and their reward is blocked until our team investigates the case. For example, some IP addresses have a high fraud rate, so users with those addresses may get “caught” in a risk rule that blocks users from those IP addresses until their conversion can be reviewed and confirmed as legitimate (or as fraud).

Our Response to the FTC

Back in 2017, the FTC raised concerns around reward delivery. Over the past 3 years, we have enhanced the rewarding process and customer interaction, and worked to reach a resolution that we believe benefits consumers, Tapjoy’s partners, and our business overall.

In accordance with our agreement with the FTC, we will further increase our efforts with advertisers to improve the clarity and transparency of their offers, and we will add enhancements to our offer testing and reward monitoring processes. We remain committed to improving our end-to-end consumer experience and expect the continued enhancements will benefit all of our stakeholders.

Customer Support Response Times

The pandemic resulted in increased use of the Tapjoy platform and a corresponding increase in inbound customer service tickets, which initially increased our time-to-resolution of support requests. In response, we increased staff, updated schedules for round-the-clock service, and invested in improved tracking for Tapjoy offers so that more users could have a seamless experience and receive rewards without the need to come to customer service. These efforts brought our average time to resolution down from 5.5 days to 1.4 days over the course of the year.