• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, May 19, 2023

As ad-supported streaming channels have expanded, so have fraud attacks.

Within connected TV, that’s particularly true for bot-driven ad fraud, which comprises 62% of total CTV fraud/sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), compared to 22% from site and app fraud, 16% from data center traffic, and a small amount of adware/malware fraud, according to DoubleVerify’s latest Global Insights Report.

The report is based on an analysis of post-bid violation rates among 5.5 trillion ad transactions across 1,000 advertiser clients in 100 countries.

Bot-driven ad fraud “surged” by 69% in 2022, rising to 0.4% of all post-bid measured impressions, from 0.24% in 2021, DV reports.

In addition, the number of CTV fraud schemes and variants has tripled since 2020.

However, a test conducted for this year’s report, in which an unprotected campaign was run in addition to the usual analysis of protected campaigns, confirmed that always-on verification protection can help control fraud rates.

In the test, the overall, across-media fraud rate for the campaign without verification protection was found to be 5.1%, versus 1.1% for protected/managed campaigns (chart top of page).

The 1.1% rate was also 25% lower than the 1.5% found for managed campaigns in 2021 -- and down from 2.6% in 2019.

The rate of brand suitability violations averaged 14% for unmanaged campaigns, versus 7.1% for managed ones. The 7.1% was flat with last year’s rate on protected campaigns.

The CTV fraud rate was 11.2% for the unprotected campaign, versus 0.6% for managed campaigns.

Fraud aside, the analysis also found managed campaigns’ video viewability rate up 2% from last year, to 74%; the display viewability rate up 4%, to 69%; and the authentic viewability rate up 4%, to 66%.

This year’s report also analyzed attention metrics.

Campaigns in the most mature market, North America, were found to lag other markets in their ability to grab attention, based on DV’s Attention Index.

For video, specifically, North America is behind all other regions in both attention and viewability. 

The analysis also concludes that there is significant available inventory that could deliver higher attention and performance.