KENT, UK – Internet-enabled television advertising may be big in the US, but it’s not confined there.

TV may be considered significantly more trustworthy as an advertising medium, but it’s future is not pre-destined to be the same.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Lauren Tiley, DoubleVerify
Senior Director, Strategic Client Partners, says that connected TV is growing – and with that growth comes risk.

Going global

“It’s all different everywhere you go,” Tiley says. “It’s evolving internationally a little bit different than the path that the U.S. has taken.

“In the UK, for example, they adapt a lot more quickly to this trend. The broadcasters have taken on CTV inventory delivery, and they created solutions that focused on extending their footprint, which is amazing. It’s great to see that inventory is being delivered where people want to spend their time.

“Broadly speaking, the infrastructure is very different and, obviously, regulation varies from market to market. It tends to be treated a little bit more like broadcast media. The reach and the scale of (that) … is something that all advertisers want.”

A creeping fraud problem

In analog, unconnected TV’s ad-moving infrastructure naturally mitigated against the incursion of nefarious ad practices that have plagued digital display.

But now many connected TV services are shipping in ads via programmatic marketplaces. Tiley thinks that poses a threat.

“The overarching assumption that all CTV content is viewable, that there’s not a lot of fraud,” she says. We’re really starting to see that assumption kind of break down. Fraud follows the money. As you start to see this explosion of interest in CTV then the CPMs of CTV, this is naturally where fraud’s going to go.”

In ad fraud, nefarious fly-by-night publishers set up and automatically initiate ad views to take ad spend. Methods include fraudulent apps containing bots, cloud server farms and spoofing

DoubleVerify’s (DV) new Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:

  • Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
  • Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.

Viewability in the frame

Whilst there is an assumption that what is on the TV screen is always in view, Tiley says that is not always correct. For one, ad units across these systems vary widely.

She says the aim is to create a viewability standard for connected TV which means “100% fully on-screen”.

“How can we make it easier for platforms and publishers to adopt measurement? ,” she asks. “That’s something that… and that we see that as an important part of our role in the industry.

This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews