Desktop app distribution glossary

Attribution and measurement

Cleared install — An install that was deterministically attributed, claimed with the receiving app's own signature, and still present and in use 48 hours later. The only unit GHAN bills for.

Install claim — The signed message the receiving SDK sends on first run when it finds an attribution token, carrying the device signals used for fraud checks.

Deterministic attribution — Crediting a source only when a unique identifier issued at click time is presented back at install time and verified. Contrast with probabilistic attribution.

Probabilistic attribution — Inferring the link between a click and an install from signals like IP address, screen resolution, OS version and timing. Always produces an answer, including when there is nothing to find. Banned in GHAN.

Fingerprinting — Building a quasi-identifier from device characteristics in order to recognise the same machine later. Banned in GHAN, with no fallback.

CTIT (click-to-install time) — The interval between the click that issued a token and the claim that redeemed it. Its distribution is a primary fraud signal.

Event chain — The full record of one GHAN transaction as it moves through impression, click, install_claim, activated_48h, and either cleared or rejected.

Double signing — The requirement that both the serving app's SDK and the receiving app's SDK independently sign before a chain can advance past the claim. Neither party can produce the other's signature.

Canary probe — A signed liveness request from the server that the SDK answers with its own signature, proving a placement slot is genuinely live in a shipped build rather than merely declared.

Money

CPI (cost per install) — The price of one install. On GHAN it is fixed per category by a published rate card and paid only on cleared installs.

Credit — GHAN's unit of account. One credit is one euro cent.

Credit bonus — The 1.2 multiplier applied when a serving app takes its earnings as credits rather than cash, turning 70 percent of the CPI into 84 percent of the CPI in spending power.

Escrow hold — The ledger entry that moves an advertiser's credits out of their spendable balance when an install is claimed, before anyone has earned anything.

Escrow release — The entry that pays the serving app once the chain clears at 48 hours. Its opposite is an automatic refund when the chain dies.

Clawback — A reversal recorded after clearing, when fraud is detected later. Always a new ledger line, never an edit.

Append-only ledger — A ledger where UPDATE, DELETE and TRUNCATE are blocked at the database level, so every correction is a new line and the history of a disagreement survives.

Take rate — The share the network keeps. GHAN's is 30 percent.

Placement

Lifecycle slot — One of GHAN's five in-app placement moments: install_complete, first_success, update, idle, uninstall_intent.

Installer-time placement — An offer shown inside a software installer. The pattern that got the previous generation of desktop bundling networks flagged as malware. GHAN has none.

Templated creative — A placement whose visual form is fixed by the network and rendered by its own SDK: icon, name, one line, install button. Partners supply data, never markup.

Bundleware — Additional software installed alongside software the person asked for, typically through a pre-checked installer option. Distinct from a post-install recommendation that requires a deliberate click and a separate installer run.

Kill switch — The server-side control that disables every placement for an app instantly, honoured by the SDK on its next fetch, with no release required.

Vetting and trust

Gate — The automated pass-or-fail checks an app must satisfy before it can trade: code signature, malware scan, domain age, contact verification, binary identity.

Reputation score — A 0-100 pre-trading score weighted 50 percent AI visibility and sentiment, 20 percent release cadence, 20 percent reviews and video coverage, 10 percent domain and social coherence.

Behaviour score — The post-trading score that replaces reputation after 500 installs, built from retention, uninstall rate, canary compliance and complaint rate.

Share of voice — An app's proportion of all brand mentions in AI answers to a set of category prompts, measured against its actual rivals. Half of GHAN's reputation score.

Pair cap — The EUR 500 per month limit on net flow between any two apps until both have behaviour scores, which makes two-app collusion unprofitable.

Pair collusion — Two apps sending each other installs to extract network payouts rather than to acquire users.

Install farm — Infrastructure that manufactures installs at scale, usually detectable because the claiming IP belongs to a hosting provider's autonomous system rather than a consumer ISP.

Interfaces

MCP (Model Context Protocol) — The protocol GHAN ships every write capability on before shipping it anywhere else, so an agent can operate the network without a browser.

x402 — The revival of HTTP 402 Payment Required as a machine-payable challenge, used by GHAN's top-up endpoint so an agent can fund a wallet without a human clicking Stripe.

llms.txt — A plain-text file at a site root that gives models a curated index and the key facts, rather than leaving them to infer both from rendered HTML.