DENVER – When it comes to connected TV, many people have considered the channel fraud-free – at least, relative to display advertising.

But, slowly but surely, fraudsters are following the money to the booming OTT TV landscape.

So ad-trading platforms are plugging in fraud-fighting software in a bid to eradicate the problem before it smothers the nascent opportunity.

Emerging channel

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Nick Frizzell, Vice President of Inventory Quality and Planning at video and connected TV (CTV) ad platform SpotX, describes the trend.

“Just because it’s delivered on that big screen, it’s not inherently fraud-free and brand-safe out of the gates,” he says.

“CTV is an emerging medium. There’s always going to be little nuances or technical details that we’re catching up on. Some of the industry initiatives like Ads.txt are not as widely adopted.

“There’s also bad actors out there that are trying to garner that media-spend away from legitimate actors. Bad actors always follow the money, and CTV is definitely where the money is heading.”

Fighting the fraud

But the likes of SpotX are not going to take the rise of fraud lying down. They are turning to ad fraud-fighting software vendors, many of which have a track record in reducing fraudulent activity in digital display environments.

“You can get there, be confident in your media-buying strategy if you implement the right tactics, ask the right questions and tailor your media-buying strategy to the CTV landscape,” Frizzell says.

SpotX is using DoubleVerify, the 12-year-old company that is one of the leading such suppliers.

“DoubleVerify helps proactively eliminate any invalid traffic from being monetized within SpotX,” Frizzell says.

“So, before a media buyer even has the opportunity to place a bid and serve a programmatic impression, it’s first being pre-filtered by DoubleVerify to eliminate any forms of invalid traffic

“So we’re providing buy-side partners with ideally fraud-free inventory, or as close to fraud-free inventory as possible.”

A growing problem

In June, DoubleVerify told Beet.TV how CTV ad fraud is occurring in three ways:

  1. Fraudulent apps containing bots
  2. Cloud server farms
  3. Spoofing

DoubleVerify’s (DV) recently-published 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.

The report says that operators assume CTV is 100% viewable – but DoubleVerify says it has found Video Completion Rates of 90% and Fully On-Screen rates of 88% in CTV.

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