The online ad industry never seems to be rid of AdFraud.
As ad dollars increasingly pour into streaming video, growing media fraud is now hitting the connected TV (CTV)/OTT space, one of the fastest growing ad mediums alongside mobile.
With the rise of OTT/CTV ads, several tech and financial factors are making them vulnerable to scams. Here, where norms and measures are yet to be established and the demand is currently greater than supply, it’s crucial to raise awareness of fraud and take steps to prevent it.
Common types of ad fraud in the CTV/OTT space include geo misrepresentation (fake IP addresses) and app/traffic spoofing, where, much like domain spoofing in display ads, the fraudsters falsely represent their inventory as belonging to premium apps/pubs.
This is the case of a new ad fraud scheme uncovered by DoubleVerify, which targeted premium publishers on CTVs and mobile.
The botnet, called MultiTerra (because of the complex multi-device targeting scheme used to trick pubs and brands), created fraudulent inventory on mobile and CTV environments, stealing roughly $1M/month from pubs by spoofing their ad inventory – generating fake impressions.
Premium pubs were particularly vulnerable to this attack because their high CPMs, making them an efficient target.
