Pixalate’s March 2024 Ad Fraud Research on CTV Apps with the Highest Invalid Traffic (IVT) Rate on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV App Stores: 17% Global IVT Rate
28 March 2024 - 7:14PM
Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and
compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile
Advertising, today released the March 2024 CTV Apps IVT Report for
Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Samsung Smart TV. The series
reveals which CTV apps appear to be most impacted by invalid
traffic (IVT), including ad fraud, as measured by
Pixalate. Pixalate’s data science team analyzed 93k+
downloadable apps across all CTV platforms, along with over 1.2+
billion global open programmatic advertising impressions from March
1-17, 2024. Pixalate’s research reveals the average global CTV IVT
rate in this time period was 17%.The reports highlight the five
most common types of IVT that Pixalate observed across all four CTV
app platforms during the study period, which are as follows:
- Display Impression Fraud
(Sophisticated Outlier Activity*): Involves
impressions generated from the same browser or device at a
statistically significant inflated rate.
- Video Impression Fraud (Sophisticated
Outlier Activity*): Video ad impressions that are
generated from the same browser or device at a statistically
significant inflated rate.
- Masked IP (Manipulation/Falsification
of Location Related Attributes*): Involves video ad
impressions generated from the same browser or device at a
statistically significant inflated rate.
- Device ID Stuffing (Sophisticated
Outlier Activity*, User Attribute Manipulation*, False
Representation*): Activity from a device connected to the
internet via a statistically significant inflated number of
different IP Addresses.
- Data Center (Known Data-Center
Traffic*): The User’s IP has a match in the Pixalate known
Datacenter list.
*Note: Parenthetical information denotes IVT detection method(s)
per Media Rating Council (MRC) Invalid Traffic Guidelines.Pixalate
excluded spoofing from this report, as spoofing requires different
tactics to mitigate it (e.g., blocking an app highly impacted by
spoofing could lead to blocking apps with real traffic attractive
to buyers). See our CTV App Spoofing series for a list of
apps most impacted by the spoofing IVT type. Learn more about
Pixalate’s reported IVT types in our Knowledge Base.Amazon
Fire TV Apps With the Highest Rates of IVT - March 20241.
Food Network GO (46%)2. TuneIn Radio (31%)3. Dove Channel (25%)4.
AsianCrush - Movies & TV (24%)5. Rakuten Viki - Free TV Drama
& Movies (21%)
Apple TV Apps With the Highest Rates of IVT - March
2024 1. WCPO 9 Cincinnati (36%)2. WMAR 2 News
Baltimore (30%)3. News 5 Cleveland WEWS (29%)4. Local News &
Weather: Haystack (28%)5. FloSports: Watch Live Sports (28%)
Roku Apps With the Highest Rates of IVT - March
2024 1. Wild World - Animal TV (49%)2. Now You Know
(47%)3. BattleZone (45%)4. Extreme Sports (41%)5. Cheddar (28%)
Samsung Smart TV Apps With the Highest Rates of IVT -
March 2024 1. Xumo Play (23%)2. The Weather Channel
(18%)3. NBC (18%)4. ESPN (10%)5. MLB.TV (8%)Download the full lists
to see the top 10 CTV apps on each platform with the highest levels
of IVT, as measured by Pixalate, from March 1-17, 2024:
- Roku apps with the highest IVT rates
- Amazon Fire TV apps with the highest IVT rates
- Apple TV apps with the highest IVT rates
- Samsung Smart TV apps with the highest IVT rates
Buyers or ad platforms can use these lists to review the traffic
on each platform they have transacted on and dive deeper into the
levels and types of IVT they may have seen. Learn more about the
best overall CTV apps for open programmatic advertising in our
Publisher Trust Index.
About PixalatePixalate is a global platform for
privacy compliance, ad fraud prevention, and data intelligence in
the digital ad supply chain. Founded in 2012, Pixalate’s platform
is trusted by regulators, data researchers, advertisers,
publishers, ad tech platforms, and financial analysts across the
Connected TV (CTV), mobile app, and website ecosystems. Pixalate is
MRC-accredited for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated
Invalid Traffic (SIVT). www.pixalate.com
Disclaimer
The content of this post, and the CTV Apps with the Highest IVT
Reports, reflect Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that
Pixalate believes can be useful to the digital media industry.
Pixalate’s opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they
are neither facts nor guarantees; and neither this post nor the
Reports are intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any
entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings and apparent
trends in the time period studied. Pixalate is sharing this data
not to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or
app, but, instead, to report findings and trends pertaining to
programmatic advertising activity in the time period studied. Per
the MRC, “'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in
various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in
U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom
definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes. Also per
the MRC, “‘Invalid Traffic’ is defined generally as traffic that
does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria,
or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should
be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic
may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic
(spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent
traffic.”
Nina Talcott
Pixalate Inc.
ntalcott@pixalate.com