Research finds 4.6% of global Connected TV (CTV) open programmatic ad traffic was “spoofed” in February 2024; Fubo, ESPN, FOX Sports, HGTV GO, Xumo Play, Tubi among CTV apps with the highest volume of spoofed impressions
LONDON, 28 March 2024 -- Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the February 2024 Connected TV (CTV) App Spoofing Reports for Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Apple TV.
This report covers CTV App Spoofing numbers in February 2024 on apps found in the Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Apple TV app stores. For background information, methodology and definitions related to CTV App Spoofing, please visit our inaugural CTV App Spoofing Report and view the FAQs there.
Global Open Programmatic CTV App Spoofing Numbers: February 2024
Pixalate’s data science team found that 4.6% of global traffic in CTV was “spoofed” in February 2024. The breakdown by platform is as follows:
Fraudulent actors can utilize app spoofing - a form of invalid traffic (IVT) - to misrepresent the true origin of the traffic. For example, a fireplace screensaver app may masquerade as “ESPN” to lure advertisers. (See Pixalate’s ‘Monarch’ CTV ad fraud scheme discovery for an example.)
Download to see more apps - the top 15 per platform - with the highest volume of spoofed impressions in February 2024:
Pixalate’s App Spoofing reports for other platforms:
Methodology
To compile this research, Pixalate’s data science team took the following steps:
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 App Spoofing Report (the “Report”), reflect Pixalate’s opinions with respect to the 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 press release nor the Report 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. 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.”
