Connected TV ads increasingly targeted by fraudsters

Advertising on connected TV is increasingly being targeted by fraudsters, according to a report commissioned by software provider DoubleVerify.

The report found identified 1,300 fraudulent apps since March 2019, with 60% detected in 2020.. There was a 61% increase in fraudulent connected TV traffic rates in Q1 of 2020 compared with a year earlier, and 78% of fraud incidents on connected are accounted for by bots, compared with 26% of overall fraud incidents related to advertising on digital platforms.

DV analysed data from advertisers representing over 2,000 brands across 75 countries, from May 2019 to April 2020.

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%, rising slightly to 2.3% in the UK. Overall, post-bid advertising fraud decreased by 35%, attributed to the use of programmatic pre-bid avoidance techniques.

The rise on connected TV ad fraud is attributed to the fact that measurement technologies aore not widely adopted and demand outstrips supply of inventory.

The resort said that as server-side ad insertion is standard for connected TV, bots are able to morror server side ad insertion traffic to commit fraud at scale.

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% across EMEA and 73% within the UK.