DoubleVerify said it detected a new fraud targeting the fast-growing connected TV ad market that has been creating invalid ads worth $6 million a month by hijacking the screen savers on CTV devices.
The SmokeScreen fraud was active even when the CTV devices were turned off. DoubleVerify said it has blocked the fraud for its clients, but it is impacting nearly 10,000 unprotected devices daily and generating up to 10 million fraudulent ad requests each day at a $20 cost-per-thousand impressions.
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The scheme remains active on unprotected CTV platforms, affecting both media sellers and advertisers.
“As fraudsters continue to aggressively target the CTV space, we are committed to blocking emerging fraud schemes across all devices, formats and ad delivery platforms,” said DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski.
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“Safeguarding the brands we serve is our first priority, since it directly impacts ad effectiveness. Fraud harms inventory quality, which in turn drives suboptimal business outcomes for global advertisers,” Zagorski said. “Through the incredible efforts of our Fraud Lab, DV is providing CTV advertisers with much-needed transparency and protection, while helping to preserve the monetization opportunity for quality publishers.”
DV’s Fraud Lab used data and insights from the company’s Video Filtering product, which enables advertisers to reduce quality infractions and associated wasted investment across all video environments and devices, even where blocking is not supported
With some CTV transactions, blocking doesn’t work. In this case, the DV Fraud Lab used DV Video Filtering to help create a SmokeScreen detector that protects DV clients from the attempted fraud.
