18% of OTT advertising inventory is fraudulent: report

MadHive recently took a look at OTT advertising requests in the open marketplace and discovered that a large percentage of them were suspicious.

According to MadHive’s data, put together after analyzing more than 1 billion OTT ad requests, 18% of OTT inventory is fraudulent. What that fraud looks like, for example, could be a single device requesting unusually high ad fills during a given time, inferring that device-based fraud is occurring, according to Mike Gasbara, director of emerging technologies, blockchain and advertising at Fabric Media.

Gasbara said fraud also happens at the app-based level, when the same ad-supported OTT app shows a very high rate of activity around the clock.

Weeding out this type of fraud is one of the reasons for MadHive’s new partnership with smart TV viewing data firm Inscape. Gasbara said the integration with Inscape will result in another data set and technology being used as a line of defense on behalf of clients against fraud.

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The companies also intend to use Inscape’s more than 11 million smart TVs and MadHive’s proprietary AI advertising platform to let broadcast networks sell linear advertising alongside OTT inventory, while providing capabilities to plan, target, measure and optimize cross-platform linear and OTT campaigns.

MadHive’s platform is currently integrated with two station groups including Tegna's Premion, which has more than 125 premium OTT networks.

“OTT allows advertisers to leverage the precision targeting of digital on the TV screen, but at the same time it’s also contributing yet another platform to an already fragmented media landscape,” said Adam Helfgott, CEO at MadHive, in a statement. “This partnership enables advertisers to holistically analyze cross-screen linear and OTT campaigns, while calibrating audiences to drive real business outcomes.”

“Advertisers are increasingly looking to take advantage of optimized OTT ad buys especially using local broadcaster inventory,” said Jodie McAfee, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Inscape, in a statement. “This deal brings optimized cross-platform advertising to all local TV markets in the U.S. regardless of what service provider a home uses to bring OTT into the home.”