There is an interesting trend in the In-app account rental market: more and more services are emerging that offer accounts with minimal rental fees. At first glance, this seems like a great savings opportunity. However, with minimal rental rates, it is unlikely that the rental business can survive solely on commission fees. The answer lies in the fact that the main revenue comes from internal launches, as these teams have their own media buying operations. Moreover, some media buying teams are taking a reverse approach by creating account rental services specifically for their buyers.

It sounds like a usual thing: many people have internal buying, and the minimum commissions look tempting, but there's a catch: your work, connections, and results may be working for someone else. These teams often aim to observe your launches and sometimes take over your buyers' approaches and working connections, scaling their buying at your expense.

Let's take a look at a few situations that we've recently encountered. All messages will be anonymous, and it's up to you to decide whether to believe us or not, but we cannot keep this information to ourselves.

Situation #1

We were contacted by a team that took accounts from one of the sellers.

We tell you from their words:

“Their conditions were the sweetest on the market. At first, there were no problems, the Moloco account was issued quickly, and the launch went smoothly. It's worth noting that we have a team of designers, baers, and our own approaches for each geo. The launch was stable, but then we started noticing something strange. One of the baers' links in Moloco were burning out significantly faster than in other In-app sources. We work with more than just Moloco, so we had something to compare it to, and the difference was quite noticeable. At first, we thought it was just a source-specific issue, but then the same thing happened on other geo sites and with other buyers.

As we wrote earlier, we have our own designers, and we are confident in the uniqueness of our approaches, as we have a team of creative professionals working on them. Therefore, we decided to test our hypothesis by taking an account from another seller and simultaneously uploading two new bundles. The result was surprising: the bundles lived significantly longer with the second seller.
Later, we were informed that the first seller had an internal bidding system. It turned out that they were not shy about using their clients' creatives, offers, and approaches. After that, the puzzle finally came together."

Situation #2

Here's another situation we were told about:

Running ad through such a partner is like pouring with a screen demonstration in a call with a competitor.
Cheap doesn't always mean good. Not all sellers who have internal buying behave dishonestly, but there are cases like this, and they can cost you your time, your work, and your working links. Be careful with agencies and teams that give Moloco at a lower percentage than usual - your workings are probably seen and used.

How to warn yourself against such cooperation

It is important to understand that the main alarm signal is the rapid burnout of connections. But it is worth remembering that this is not always the fault of account rental services. Sometimes, the problem may be in the errors of the user themselves, so a deeper analysis of the situation is needed.
If you don't have a lot of experience, a team of in-app buyers, in-house designers, and various in-app sources, it can be challenging to determine if someone is using your links. Therefore, we have prepared some recommendations on what to look for if you suspect that something is amiss:
the rental has its own internal booking system;
the commission is significantly lower than the market average.

Conclusions

We do not recommend immediately refusing to cooperate or making hasty conclusions, but we advise you to test working with several rental agencies at the same time. This approach will help to eliminate the risk of theft of bundles and preserve your work.
Remember: all the work is your intellectual property. Transparency and a clear understanding of roles are the basis for long-term and honest cooperation.

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