Despite the massive shift of eyeballs from linear to streaming content, concerns over ad fraud have some major advertisers reluctant to commit large portions of their budgets to CTV.
Meanwhile, with the rapid growth of streaming viewership, CTV publishers have had their hands full, managing everything from programming and production to distribution contracts and relationships with their playout partners.
When it comes to managing fraud, many publishers are inclined to take a reactive approach and license a “good enough” software solution for mitigating invalid traffic (IVT). But there are proactive steps they should take as well.
Here are four ways to protect your CTV inventory from getting lumped in with the bad guys.
1. Beware of reselling other publishers’ inventory
Given the explosion of streaming content and distribution channels, some CTV publishers outsource programmatic operations to a CTV inventory management platform. This practice is particularly common among small FAST and AVOD publishers without significant programmatic advertising expertise.
But in some cases, those inventory management providers, along with their publisher clients, also generate incremental revenue by selling other publishers’ CTV inventory. Some platforms blend inventory from multiple unapproved bundle IDs into the same VAST tags tied to a publisher’s DSP and managed-service deals, effectively pooling supply behind a single integration. This arrangement is where fraud can thrive.
Sometimes the insertion of these foreign bundle IDs may yield significant revenue despite running for only a few hours. But these revenue “bursts” are, at best, noncompliant with ads.txt and SSP protocol and, at worst, come from serving fraudulent impressions.
If a legitimate CTV publisher collects revenue from resold fraudulent inventory, the consequences extend well beyond reputational damage. The publisher could face IVT-related clawbacks and even possible termination from SSPs.
2. Partner with your SSP’s inventory quality team
Surprisingly few publishers get to know their SSPs’ inventory quality (IQ) teams, even though these groups sit at the center of fraud prevention. IQ teams are responsible for monitoring supply, investigating suspicious traffic, enforcing platform policies and working with detection vendors to flag and remediate invalid traffic. They have seen just about everything.
Publishers might consider IQ teams to be a barrier, especially when launching new bundle IDs, because IQ reviews sometimes slow onboarding or raise questions about traffic quality. But most IQ teams are willing to meet with publishers to explain common risk signals and offer ways to interpret IVT platform data. This education can help establish the publisher as the front line of defense against fraud, with the IQ team as backup.
3. Update ads.txt often and check seller.json pages
Interpreting ads.txt and sellers.json code is intimidating to even the most seasoned programmatic veterans. But keeping these lines of code clean and current can reduce fraud significantly.
The general rule with ads.txt lines is less is more. Accordingly, some publishers limit the lines that new reseller partners can add. This not only makes the code easier to manage but also reduces the opportunity to hide shady supply chains.
Some agile publishers update their ads.txt within a day of a partner making a change, such as adding new reseller relationships or eliminating non-active resellers. But it is more common for publishers to rarely update their ads.txt code, as if it was written in stone. That lack of diligence could result in the publisher inadvertently continuing to greenlight resellers that have been found to engage in fraudulent activity.
Most publishers should establish a weekly or at least monthly cadence for updating ads.txt lines. Similarly, resellers should update their sellers.json page with the same cadence, and their lines should correspond to the publisher’s ads.txt lines.
4. Review advertiser domains
Fraud doesn’t only happen on the sell side. It exists on the buy side, too.
Sometimes, fraudsters using fake or non-existent advertiser domains can gain access to a seat on a DSP and use it to buy legitimate ad inventory. This practice is particularly common in open-auction environments. These “advertisers” then peddle fraudulent or unapproved products during CTV content.
This type of fraud is less known because it is harder to catch with software solutions. Detection of advertiser domain fraud often starts with an unexpected jump in revenue attributed to an unknown domain. But further investigation reveals that, when the declared advertiser domain is pasted into a browser, it results in a 404 error.
It takes an eagle eye to find these fake advertiser domains – and the willingness to purge unwanted revenue. But being proactive is the only way to keep shady buyers away from your inventory.
If reducing fraud is on your agenda, these four simple steps can make a significant impact. And, if enough publishers get proactive about cleaning up CTV ad supply, the result is bigger than individual wins; it is a healthier marketplace that gives brands the confidence to invest in CTV at scale.
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
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