Fraud affects nearly 20% CTV programmatic inventory, finds DoubleVerify research
Nearly 10% of video ads and 20% of CTV ads inventory were fraud or sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), according to new research.
DoubleVerify, a digital media measurement company found ad fraud is on the rise in online video and streaming undermining campaign engagement and effectiveness.
The data company analyses two billion ad impressions every day and isolated a spike in fraudulent traffic across online video and CTV inventory since mid-October.
These could come from hijacked devices, bots and “injected ads” and come at a time of year when ad spend and consumer engagement are highest.
In a sample of unprotected programmatic inventory, DoubleVerify discovered that 6.6% of video ads and 18% of CTV ads were fraud or SIVT.
“The adage holds true, fraud follows the money,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO at DoubleVerify. “The more in-demand and premium the inventory, the more likely it is to attract bad actors. In addition, while fraud normally peaks in Q4, we have found that the volumes this year are already higher compared with Q4 of 2020 — and we’re barely into December.”
‘Spike’ in two streaming fraud schemes over Q4 2021
DoubleVerify identified two specific streaming fraud schemes that have increased activity over this quarter and consequently “hurt CTV holiday performance.”
Fraud schemes LeoTerra and CelloTerra have both falsified billions of ad impressions since forming in 2020.
LeoTerra creates fake server-side ad insertion servers (SSAI) and creates counterfeit CTV inventory across apps, IPs and devices. This activity has increased throughout Q4 2021 as it fakes up to 20.5 million unique CTV devices daily, which is a 20x increase in volumes than Q4 2020.
CelloTerra is a mobile fraud scheme which runs background ads and fakes CTV traffic which has tripled its false CTV devices and impressions in Q4 2021.
Digital videos and CTV programmatic inventory are not the only mediums affected by fraud as different research found a quarter of brands’ followers were “fake” or “suspicious”.