• by Alex Weprin , November 28, 2018

The fraud intelligence firm Pixalate says it has secured 12 new accreditations from the Media Rating Council, including for sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) detection covering connected TV/over-the-top video ad impressions, mobile web, mobile in-app, and desktop video.

Pixalate says it is the first solution to be accredited across all devices, with 17 MRC accreditations in total. That cross-device accreditation has become increasingly important, as marketing budgets and campaigns are being spread far and wide.

“Most campaigns these days are run cross-platform. When you want to reach a consumer, you care about reaching that consumer, however they are consuming media,” Pixalate Vice President of Product Marketing Amy King tells Digital News Daily. “Increasingly for us that is our phones, our desktops, our tablets, our OTT devices. If you were to run a campaign across all of those environments, you need to be protected across each one, especially the newer ones.”

“Fraudsters know that those environments are ripe for exploiting,” King says. “In the video environments you have very high CPMs, so it is highly worth their while to try and beat the system. With all of that happening, it has become an atmosphere ripe for fraud.”

Pixalate’s expanded accreditations come as the digital ad industry continues to find ways to battle fraud. The latest and most promising news came Tuesday evening, when the Department of Justice announced it had indicted eight people who allegedly stole 10s of millions of dollars through a sophisticated ad-fraud scheme.

It was by far the largest case of digital ad fraud ever pursued by the DOJ.

Of course, for marketers, it isn’t enough to wait until a fraud scheme is uncovered by the FBI -- hence the need for improved tracking of SIVT across platforms.