CTV advertising-fraud schemes, according to DoubleVerify, “may have siphoned $140 million from publishers in 2021.”

The company said there was “an unprecedented number of schemes targeted CTV and video – the most complex and sophisticated of which included OctoBot, SneakyTerra, ViperBot and SmokeScreen.”

DoubleVerify analyzes more than one trillion impressions delivered across over 2,100 brands in 80 markets.

But there are positive signs. “The good news is that verification is working,” says Mark Zagorski, chief executive officer of DoubleVerify.

Zagorski says the viewable rate for video and display are near or above 70%.

He adds that brand-safety violations decreased for the second year in a row -- down 9% to an overall rate of 7.1%, “meaning advertisers see brand suitability violation rates decrease as their verification strategy matures.”

Other good news is that Video Completion Rates (VCR) for all digital platforms have steadily climbed to 71% in 2021 from 67% in 2020 and 62% in 2019.

Contributing to this improvement are sharply stronger results on connected TV platforms climbing 3% to 95.6% VCR.

Overall, DoubleVerify says, fraud and SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic) came in at 1.5% in North America -- the highest for any global territory.

The overall global fraud rate average is 5.2%.