Adobe Advertising Cloud, White Ops Tackle Ad Fraud in Connected TV Advertising

Despite early growing pains, Connected TV (CTV) is beginning to live up to its early promise by combining the mass appeal of TV with the effectiveness of digital advertising. According to Nielsen, around one-third of Americans own and regularly use a smart TV or connected device to stream video (i.e. an Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick or Roku), watching an average of 2.3 to 3.6 hours per day. Since these viewers are 23 years younger than the average linear TV viewer, advertisers have a unique opportunity to drive incremental reach with a cord-cutting or cord-shaving audience that averages high viewability and completion rates in excess of 95 percent. In all, it’s easy to see the format’s appeal to advertisers — and, sadly, purveyors of non-human traffic and advertising fraud.

Many advertisers assume that CTV is relatively safe from botnets and non-human traffic. Since CTV viewers typically login or authenticate to access content, and smart TVs and over-the-top (OTT) devices are widely thought to be less susceptible to hijacking by botnets, it’s a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately , CTV is still susceptible to the same spoofing and misrepresentation of inventory as mobile and desktop inventory – especially given the recent growth of mid-tail and long-tail content available OTT.

To ensure total accountability for advertisers, Adobe Advertising Cloud is widening its integration with White Ops to detect advertising fraud on connected TV inventory. The partnership will help ensure that all video inventory available on Adobe Advertising Cloud is scanned by White Ops, which will provide independent third-party bot detection.

“While ad fraud is likely still a nominal issue in connected TV advertising, we believe one dollar spent on a non-human viewer is one too many. We’re excited to be integrating with White Ops to prevent that from happening,” said Keith Eadie, VP and GM of Adobe Advertising Cloud.

“Great content in great environments attracts something very precious: real human engagement. The premiums paid in OTT advertising reflect just how valuable that engagement really is,” said Michael Tiffany, President and Co-Founder of White Ops. “With bots and spoofing and other tricks, ad fraud makes it look like there are way more people watching ads than there really are. That cheapens all the hard work done by real creators. Right now, in OTT, we have a unique opportunity to build the defenses needed to protect this precious environment before fraud grows. Adobe Advertising Cloud has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to rooting out ad fraud, and we’re proud to partner with them to extend protection to connected TV.”

The integration builds on Adobe Advertising Cloud’s extensive track record in ensuring media quality and brand safety for advertisers, including industry-first initiatives like full SSP fee transparency and the Non-Human Traffic Credit Program. This is another necessary step to shield advertisers from waste.

Ultimately, eliminating non-human traffic is not just a concern for advertisers, but also TV networks and top OTT publishers as misrepresentation of inventory minimizes the value of real premium inventory. Advertisers may think they’re getting quality inventory at cheaper prices, but in reality they may be driving down the value of true, premium inventory.

To combat this, Adobe Advertising Cloud has always given full control over where ads run and a breadth of premium inventory partnerships — often made possible by the fact that we do not own media or have a vested interest in where an ad runs. Advertising Cloud’s On Demand marketplace, which automates private and direct deals, averaged over one billion CTV ad opportunities per month so far in 2018 from broadcasters that offer full episodes or live sports alone.