Pixalate Week in Review: April 9

This week's review of ad fraud and quality in the digital advertising space.

1. Today's trending mobile apps in display advertising

Pixalate this week released a list of the top trending mobile apps in display advertising, featuring data from March 2018. Pixalate measured programmatic display advertising activity within mobile apps throughout March 2018 to compile the research. The "trending apps" are based on a share of voice analysis of programmatic ad volume across iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

The full list of the top 30 trending apps is also available for download.

2. Ad fraud concerns are driving brands away from the long tail

"Marketers taking a conservative approach to brand safety are pulling back from buying the long tail to minimize their exposure to fraudulent, non-viewable and brand-unsafe inventory," reported AdExchanger. The article notes that "[t]op publishers will benefit from the shift in brand dollars toward known, well-lit environments."

3. About 16% of publishers have ads.txt errors

"On one hand, ads.txt ... helps publishers take control of their inventory by giving ad buyers a check against domain spoofing and arbitrage," wrote eMarketer. "On the other, making simple errors in the text file can lead publishers to miss out on some cash." The article cites recent research from FirstImpression which notes that about 16% of the top 30,000 Alexa publishers have errors in their ads.txt files. According to Pixalate's latest data, nearly 400,000 total sites now have ads.txt implemented.

4. Agencies are seeking 'brand-safety officers'

Digiday calls "brand-safety officer" the "new most important role at agencies." The article notes that IPG Mediabrands tapped a new brand-safety officer this week, while GroupM filled a similar role last year. The article also notes that Bank of America "is in the process of hiring a brand-safety officer that will essentially focus on making sure the company gets what it pays for when it comes to advertising."

5. Op-ed says blockchain can't cure programmatic's ad fraud woes

In an op-ed published on Forbes, Paul Roberts, founder and CEO of Kubient, writes: "In my opinion, the blockchain is not currently suited to analyze for fraud like machine learning, especially in the 100-millisecond, high QPS (Queries Per Second) environment of programmatic advertising lives."

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