Report: Fraudsters flock to Connected TV
August 19, 2020
Digital media measurement, data and analytics software platform DoubleVerify (DV) has released its 2020 Global Insights Report, providing a market-by-market benchmark on the current and future state of media quality for global advertisers. In developing the report, DV analysed data from advertisers representing over 2,000 brands across 80 countries, from May 2019 to April 2020.
Global CTV snapshot: CTV booms . . . and fraud follows
The report found the growing Connected TV (CTV) ecosystem is the most targeted environment for fraudsters. DV has identified:
- 1,300 fraudulent apps identified since March 2019 (with 60 per cent detected in 2020 alone)
- A 161 per cent increase in fraudulent CTV traffic rates in Q1 of 2020 vs. Q1 of 2019
- 78 per cent of fraud incidents on CTV are accounted for by bots (compared with 26 per cent of overall fraud incidents)
- Non-certified programmatic CTV saw a Fraud Rate over 11x higher than CTV transacted through DV-certified marketplaces, and approximately 9x higher than publisher-direct buys.
EMEA benchmarks: Brand suitability, fraud and video
Brand suitability ensures a brand’s ads do not appear in the context of / or adjacent to unsuitable content. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to brand suitability; brand safe environments can be unique to each brand. DV’s Brand Suitability Rate records instances of ads being served on sites or apps, or adjacent to content that does not meet a brand’s suitability parameters, including both blocked impressions, and those found to be outside a brand’s suitability parameters. Overall, DV’s findings show that brands continue to take measures in response to increasing risks to safety and suitability, with the EMEA Brand Suitability Rate increasing 24 per cent year-over-year to 9.8 per cent, and the UK slightly below at 9.0 per cent.
DV found that EMEA was also the only region that experienced an increase in the post-bid Fraud Rate, with an EMEA-wide rate of 2.0 per cent, rising slightly to 2.3 per cent in the UK. However, EMEA’s Video Viewable Rate, which refers to the number of video impressions deemed viewable, significantly outpaced all other geographic regions surveyed, for a total of 76 per cent across EMEA and 73 per cent within the UK.
“Brands need clarity and confidence in their digital investments,” said Tanzil Bukhari, Managing Director, EMEA at DoubleVerify. “This report shows that while brands in EMEA have been working hard to boost suitability and targeting capabilities, emerging channels with unestablished standards like CTV present a growing challenge when it comes to ad fraud and brand safety. Moving forward, advertisers and publishers must challenge the status quo and collaborate on driving standards, building best-practices and embracing technology to set a solid baseline which is underpinned by quality and can exceed performance.”