DoubleVerify Announces Programmatic Platform Certification Program for Connected TV Fraud Protection

DoubleVerify ("DV"), a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data and analytics, today announced the industry’s first connected TV (“CTV”) Targeting Certification for programmatic platforms, designed to protect advertisers from fraud and invalid traffic (“IVT”) in the CTV space.

In order to be certified by DV for CTV Targeting, a platform must demonstrate the ability to prevent fraud and IVT by applying DV’s pre-bid app and device fraud protection for CTV inventory transactions. To date, certified partners include Amobee, MediaMath, SpotX, The Trade Desk and Xandr.

“DV has developed the most comprehensive and accurate CTV fraud identification in the industry, identifying millions of devices and hundreds of applications as invalid,” said Matt McLaughlin, COO of DoubleVerify. “DV’s CTV Targeting Certification gives advertisers confidence that their CTV investment is protected when buying through the market-leading platforms that have successfully completed this certification.”

Accompanying the launch, DV also released its CTV Guide, entitled The ABCs of CTV, to educate advertisers on best practices around CTV media quality measurement and performance. Characterized by scarce, premium inventory and high demand, CTV has begun to attract the attention of fraudsters. DV recently tracked a 120% year-on-year increase in fraudulent CTV and mobile apps, and flagged over 200 fraudulent CTV apps in the first half of 2019 alone. DV currently identifies approximately 100,000 new CTV devices as fraudulent per day.

DV’s Fraud identification leverages custom-built algorithms and detection methods that do not require the use of an SDK or custom integration. DV has taken a bespoke approach to combating fraud on CTV, with strategies combining human expertise and machine learning that include:

- Fraud analysts specialising in CTV inventory and the app ecosystem;
- Dedicated hardware lab with advanced capabilities to reverse-engineer CTV threats;
- Unique machine learning features and algorithms designed specifically to solve for fraud prevalent in CTV; and
- Specialised telemetry to identify CTV fraud, with the biggest threats originating from SSAI abuse, app spoofing and bots.