Programmatic Ad Seller Misrepresentation in CTV Q4 2024: Pixalate Estimates $1.2 Billion of Global Open Programmatic CTV Ad Spend Routed Through Unauthorized ‘Direct’ Sellers

According to Pixalate’s latest Supply Path Optimization (SPO) research using SupplyChain Object (SCO) data, 28% of Connected TV (CTV) traffic with SCOs marked as ‘complete’ was sold by unauthorized direct sellers

LONDON, February 14, 2025 -- Pixalate, the global market-leading ad fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform, today released the Q4 2024 Programmatic Ad Seller Misrepresentation Report for Connected TV (CTV). The report uses SCO data to examine unauthorized sellers in the open programmatic advertising supply chain across CTV. Pixalate also released desktop and mobile web and mobile app versions of this report.

The SupplyChainObject (SCO) lets buyers and intermediaries view all parties selling or reselling open programmatic advertising inventory. Numerous partners are often involved in open programmatic supply paths, fragmenting the ecosystem and making it vulnerable to ad fraud attacks. Pixalate's latest report highlights the prevalence of unauthorized selling within the global programmatic supply chain despite the implementation of ads.txt or app-ads.txt.

Key Findings

• Failing Verification. 21% of CTV traffic with SCOs fail Pixalate’s SCO verification due to unauthorized sellers (including direct or resellers) in CTV in Q4 2024
• Unauthorized Direct Sellers. 28% of CTV traffic with SCOs marked as ‘complete’ was sold by unauthorized direct sellers in Q4 2024

Pixalate’s analysis includes a set of SCO verification checks as defined by Pixalate, utilizing IAB Tech Lab’s ads.txt/app-ads.txt standards, along with SCO data from the OpenRTB bid stream to evaluate the accuracy of declared supply paths in the ad bid stream.  Learn more about Pixalate’s SCO verification and validation.

For this report series, Pixalate's data science team analyzed over 10 billion programmatic ad impressions containing the OpenRTB SCO during Q4 2024.

Download the complete Q4 2024 Supply Path Optimization (SPO) Reports:

About Pixalate

Pixalate is a global market-leading ad fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform. Pixalate works 24/7 to guard your reputation and grow your media value by offering the only system of coordinated solutions across display, app, video, and CTV for the detection and elimination of ad fraud. Pixalate is an MRC-accredited service for the detection and filtration of sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) across desktop and mobile web, mobile in-app, and CTV advertising. www.pixalate.com

Disclaimer

The content of this press release, and the Programmatic Ad Seller Misrepresentation Reports (the “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. 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 across mobile apps in the time period studied. As used herein, and per the MRC, “'Invalid Traffic' (IVT) 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.”