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

Research finds a 17% invalid traffic (IVT, including ad fraud) rate across global Connected TV (CTV) open programmatic ad traffic from March 1-17, 2024; Xumo Play (23%) had the highest IVT rate among Samsung Smart TV apps in the time period, while Food Network GO (46%) had the highest among Amazon Fire TV apps


LONDON, March 28, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 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 2024


1. 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:

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 Pixalate
Pixalate 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.”

 

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