DoubleVerify said that over the past year it has uncovered multiple major connected TV fraud schemes that could have cost publishers more than $144 million annually.
CTV is attractive to schemers because the media attracts a CPM of $20, higher than most other forms of digital media.
DoubleVerify said that it discovered several schemes and they were blocked and neutralized, protecting its clients.
"CTV ad fraud doesn’t just impact advertiser ad spend, it also impacts publishers’ bottom lines,” said Mimi Wotring, senior VP of publisher sales and client services at DoubleVerify. “Schemes like MultiTerra and SneakyTerra siphon millions of dollars of revenue from high-quality CTV publishers without their knowledge. Through the incredible efforts of our Fraud Lab, DV helps preserve the monetization opportunity for these publishers who deserve a premium for their inventory and engaged audience access.”
DoubleVerify described some of those scheme:
MultiTerra: Uncovered in late 2020, the botnet was designed to create fraudulent inventory in CTV and mobile environments. MultiTerra undermines the monetization potential of legitimate CTV supply providers by artificially inflating inventory volume and directing media investment away from these platforms. This particular botnet generated more than three million fake impressions a day at its peak in CTV and mobile environments. At the time, the inventory value of the impression requests was on track for stealing over $1 million a month.
SneakyTerra: Uncovered in late 2020, this was the first server-side ad insertion (SSAI) scheme known to hijack real CTV device sessions. At its peak, the highly sophisticated scheme spoofed over 2 million devices each day, and may have cost more than $5 million per month.
LeoTerra/StreamScan: Uncovered in late 2020, “StreamScam” highlighted a very common approach to CTV fraud related to SSAI. In these types of schemes, fraudsters set up counterfeit SSAI servers and then manufacture CTV inventory across an unlimited number of apps, IPs and devices.
DV’s Fraud Lab performs ongoing detection and analysis of new types of ad fraud across channels in order to uncover the latest schemes as they occur. Through continuous analysis, scenario management and research, the Fraud Lab pinpoints the sites, apps and devices responsible for fraudulent activity and updates protection for DV clients in real-time. ■
