App monetisation company Tapjoy hit back at reports which questioned the way it does business, arguing that “it is not only a clear misrepresentation of what we do at Tapjoy, but also, unfortunately, an attack on the integrity of our developer partners and the quality of their work”.

The move followed a scathing article from TechCrunch, which said that “Tapjoy is the primary purveyor of paid app downloads, and it has made a mess of the mobile app ecosystem”.

According to the report, Apple is again cracking down on apps which use incentivised installs – the market where Tapjoy is most well-known.

Previously, users of one app could receive incentives such as virtual currency in return for installing another – pushing the second app up the charts, and increasing visibility.

When Apple stopped this, categorising it as manipulating the App Store charts, companies such as Tapjoy moved the offer beyond the app and into linked webpages which promote additional titles – and which are not detected during the app approvals process.

In its blog post, Mihir Shah, CEO of Tapjoy, said that “we work diligently to ensure compliance with Apple’s TOS, and each week, Apple approves hundreds of apps that integrate and leverage Tapjoy. In fact, Apple has featured a number of Tapjoy enabled apps in the last few months”.

He continued: “This article slights the intelligence of consumers, and inaccurately characterises a double-opt in ad-driven model that works. The simple fact is that 110 million monthly active users and 13 million registered users on Tapjoy.com agree with the Mobile Value Exchange model.”

According to PocketGamer, Tapjoy launched its web-based incentivised download efforts in October last year.