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Pixalate’s May 2024 CTV App Spoofing on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, & Samsung Smart TV: 8.9% of CTV App Traffic is Spoofed - ‘NBC’, ‘ESPN Live Sports’, ‘Fox News Network’ Among Most at Risk

Jun 27, 2024 10:00:00 AM

Pixalate’s research reveals that Apple TV apps were the most at risk of CTV app spoofing, with an app spoofing rate of 16%, as measured by Pixalate, followed by Amazon Fire TV apps 9%), Roku apps (7%), and Samsung Smart TV apps (6%)

LONDON, June 27, 2024 -- Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the May 2024 Connected TV (CTV) App Spoofing Reports for Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Apple TV.

The reports reveal which CTV apps are most at risk of app spoofing. Malicious actors can use invalid traffic (IVT) techniques, such as app spoofing, to disguise the CTV app traffic source. In this scheme, an app, like a ‘fireplace screensaver,’ might be misrepresented as a popular app, such as “ESPN,” to attract advertisers. (See Pixalate’s ‘Monarch’ CTV ad fraud scheme discovery for an example.)

Pixalate’s data science team analyzed over 2.3 billion global open programmatic advertising impressions across over 5k CTV apps (including delisted) across the Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Apple TV app stores in May 2024 to compile this research.

Global Open Programmatic CTV App Spoofing Data: May 2024

  • Apple TV: 16%
  • Amazon Fire TV: 9%
  • Roku: 7%
  • Samsung Smart TV: 6%

Top Roku CTV apps at risk of spoofing in May 2024

Top 10 spoofed CTV_May 24_Roku

  1. Fubu: Watch Live TV & Sports - 17%
  2. Watch TNT - 19%
  3. Fox News: US, World, & Election Headlines - 10%
  4. Fandango at Home - 17%
  5. USA Network - 50%+

Top Amazon Fire TV CTV apps at risk of spoofing in May 2024

Top 10 spoofed CTV_May 24_Fire TV

  1. WSFL News - 50%+
  2. KGWN News - 50%+
  3. Lifetime - 11%
  4. Mega Streamz - 50%+
  5. HISTORY - 12%

Top Samsung Smart TV CTV apps at risk of spoofing in May 2024

Top 10 spoofed CTV_May 24_Samsung

  1. Pluto TV - 12%
  2. NBC - 13%
  3. Cooking Channel - 21%
  4. MEGOGO TV & Movies - 13%
  5. Travel Channel - 35%

Top Apple TV CTV apps at risk of spoofing in May 2024

Top 10 spoofed CTV_May 24_Apple tvOS

  1. USA Network - 35%
  2. ESPN: Live Sports & Scores - 35%
  3. Scripps News - 50%
  4. AMC: Stream TV Shows & Movies - 30%
  5. WBTV News - 35%


Download to see more apps - the top 15 per platform - at risk of spoofing in May 2024, as measured by Pixalate:

Samsung Smart TV     Amazon Fire TV

Apple TV     Roku

Pixalate’s App Spoofing reports for other platforms:

Methodology

To compile this research, Pixalate’s data science team took the following steps:

  1. Identify “Highly Impacted” CTV apps: On each respective platform, Pixalate identified apps with the highest rate of spoofed traffic (e.g. the percentage of all traffic purporting to come from the app that does not actually come from the app). In the context of this research, “Highly Impacted” apps are apps that have an app spoofing rate of 10%+ or apps that have an app spoofing rate greater than 90% of other apps on a given platform, whichever is lower.

  2. The “Highly Impacted” apps are then ranked by volume of spoofed impressions.

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.”

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