CTV Ad Fraud: Tips And Tricks For Avoiding The Scammers

Wherever there are ads, there are bound to be fraudsters trying to skim off the top of your ad budgets. In this blog post, we explain how CTV ad works — and how to avoid it.

Around 3,750 years ago, a customer named Nanni chiseled a complaint into a stone tablet, saying he was overcharged for poor-quality copper by a local merchant. This tablet, which is part of the British Museum, shows two things:

• Fraud has always been a risk when doing business, and
• Customers have always been unwilling to stand for it.

This is still true today, where even in a new, high-tech industry like connected TV (CTV) advertising, fraud is still a concern. In fact, as the CTV industry has grown and attracted more investment, the lure for fraudsters has grown with it. Some estimates place the cost of CTV ad fraud in the billions.

At OKO, we’re well-versed in both the opportunities and challenges of doing business online. That’s why, in this blog post, we’ll show you how CTV ad fraud works — and how to avoid it

Case Study: find out how OKO was able to boost Loop Media’s revenue by 500% — on the first day.

What Is CTV Ad Fraud?

One of the benefits of CTV is that all ads are 100% viewable, as they’re always centered within the screen. They’re also frequently unskippable, or only skippable after you’ve allowed a chunk of the ad to play. But there are still ways to serve impressions that aren’t seen by anyone: if a user falls asleep on the couch, for example. This kind of shrink isn’t fraud, but it’s a window into how fraud can happen:

CTV ad fraud is when ad attribution and engagement is actively, deliberately, and maliciously manipulated in order to collect revenue from an advertiser.

CTV ad fraud is no laughing matter and it generally falls under very specific categories. Once you understand these categories and how they operate, they become a lot easier to identify and prevent.

Types Of CTV Ad Fraud

Ad fraud on CTV functions very much the same way as ad fraud on any other digital platform. Here are some example types:

• Ad Stacking: In “ad stacking,” a fraudster layers several ads on top of one another. To the viewer at home, only the top ad is visible. But advertisers are being charged for ads that nobody could see, or for multiple duplicate impressions.
• Ad Injection: One of the more-unscrupulous methods, ad injection is when a bad actor inserts additional ads into a CTV broadcast. These typically occur via compromised wi-fi, malware browser extensions, and other forms of hacking.
• Domain Spoofing: with domain spoofing, fraudsters pose as legitimate CTV publishers, in order to trick advertisers into placing ad bids on fake ad slots. The scammers alter device IDs, create fake apps, and manipulate headers to convince advertisers they are buying impressions on legitimate channels. Sometimes those ads aren’t shown at all, and sometimes the traffic is dumped somewhere incredibly low-quality. Either way, the advertiser isn’t getting what they paid for and the real publisher’s reputation takes a hit.
• Bot Traffic: Though we all know the booming benefits of AI in adtech, unethical individuals can use software programs, called “bots,” to pose as legitimate viewers to game impression and engagement data. This method inflates the success of CTV ad campaigns by essentially showing ad content to robots pretending to be people.

As you can see, these methods are frequently the same sort of trick scammers have been using to game the system on web ads, social media, and more. As a certain copper merchant could tell you, there’s nothing new under the sun.

So what methods can we use to avoid CTV ad fraud?

Avoiding CTV Ad Fraud

While the methods scammers use to commit ad fraud are nothing new, we’ve also got solutions, new and old, to keep advertisers and publishers safe from fraudsters. Solutions like:

• Work With Partners You Can Trust: This is somewhat obvious, but when you’re moving into a new sector of the industry, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and overlook the obvious. Publishers and publisher partners who have a good track record for authenticity and success are always the best starting place. Looking for partners who have Google’s MCM and/or GCPP certifications is a good way to make sure your partners are vetted for their honesty and accuracy.
• Fraud Detection/Prevention Tools: If fraud detection and prevention is something you’re attempting to handle yourself, there are detection and prevention tools on the market with this in mind. Outlets such as HUMAN Security, DoubleVerify, and others use a combination of methods to vet traffic and check for suspicious activity. Obviously, these services aren’t free, and deciding which one is right for you is another project by itself.
• Common Sense: Hopefully, you know your own brand and creatives well enough to know when performance seems hinky. While fraudulent traffic can sometimes go to lengths to appear legitimate, the data will typically have some “tells.” If your campaign is supposed to be targeting American baseball fans, but your user location data is showing a lot of engagement from Russia, for example, then someone is probably fluffing their numbers with bot-farming. Keeping an eye on the specifics of your reporting (which your partners should be transparent about) can help tip you off to any scams.
• Keep Up On The Industry: Alerts about ad frauds and other threats are often widely-publicized in various industry sites, news feeds, etc. Keeping in good communication with your network, participating in conferences and trade shows, and keeping an ear out for law enforcement bulletins can all help you stay updated on the latest ways scammers are trying to get you.

Of course, if you’re trying to keep thieves out of your house, locking the doors or getting a big dog, or paying for an alarm system are never as effective as doing all of those things at the same time. And one of the best ways to do that is via multi-factor conversion mapping.

Multi-Factor Attribution

Spoofing one aspect of impressions or engagement can be easy for scammers, but if you force them to fake multiple aspects of a conversion at the same time, it gets progressively harder. Eventually, it becomes easier for them to just do legitimate business, and at that point, you’ve got a lot less to worry about.

Utilizing a variety of methods simultaneously — like device mapping, IP address tracking, timestamp analysis, and more — makes it not only easier to determine whether impressions and conversions are genuine, but also help clean out the signal from the noise to ensure you’re getting the most accurate data possible.

So first, you’d check to see if ad impressions were served against an IP address, and then you’d check the timestamp of that ad impression. By combining various forms of impression and conversion data, you can trace an ad impression to multiple devices on the same household network, ensuring accurate data. And importantly, spoofing that level of granularity is harder for scammers to accomplish.

Final Thoughts

The reason scammers are getting drawn to CTV is the same reason everybody else is: it’s got a lot of potential to be incredibly lucrative. So far, the increased technical barriers for entry mean that CTV is still less prone to fraud than online adtech as a whole — and if you follow our advice, the risk to you starts to evaporate.

If you’re a publisher still concerned about CTV ad fraud, then OKO is a partner that has your back. As a Google Certified Publishing Partner, OKO’s had a reputation for honesty and success since we were founded in 1996. We can get you started on your CTV journey the right way. You can get started out today by reaching out to our team.