OTT Is Not Fraud Free — But Can We Change That?

How Hershey, Hearst, IPG, MadHive And Beachfront Are Fighting OTT Fraud

At MadHive we believe the only way to make long lasting change in the advertising ecosystem is to bring together key stakeholders to tackle the problems the industry is facing. And that’s exactly what AdLedger is doing to address fraud on OTT by uniting MadHive, Reprise/IPG Mediabrands, Hearst Television, The Hershey Company and Beachfront Media, to release a collaborative report on the digital TV ecosystem.

“As the industry continues to have ebbs and flows, and the currents of how to get the most ROI change, clients are increasingly eager to incorporate platforms like digital and connected television inventory into their campaigns,” said Tim Ringel, Global CEO, Reprise. “With OTT, they get the best of both worlds: the value of television and efficiency of digital.”

Recent MadHive findings uncovered that 18% of OTT inventory is fraudulent, with the predominant methods mirroring the traditional digital ecosystem, including:

1. Misrepresentation: This is when a fraudulent arbitrager is selling ads they claim are being shown to users in the US, but the ad is actually shown to a device in non-US countries.
2. Device Based: This is when a single device reports a very high number of ads during a given time period, for example 50 ads per minute.
3. App Based: This is when the same ad-supported OTT app shows a very high rate of activity around the clock.

With Beachfront Media estimating that the open auction marketplace contains about 5 million OTT impressions on any given day, that means nearly 1mm impressions a day are fraudulent. If the problem isn’t addressed, this could lead to large portions of marketers’ OTT media budgets being lost. Fortunately, we now have cutting-edge technologies that have the potential to stop these issues in their tracks, many of which are being actively piloted by AdLedger members. And this is precisely why MadHive founded the AdLedger consortium, to work with advertising leaders across the supply chain in a proactive, collaborative way to understand how blockchain and cryptography can fight fraud and remedy overall industry problems.

MadHive is committed to helping the industry avoid these kinds of pitfalls, and not follow in the footsteps of our digital fore-bearers. By arming ourselves with knowledge now, we can ensure the same problems that happen in display do not happen in OTT.

Check out AdLedger’s full report for a deep-dive into the types of fraud occurring in OTT, its massive growth potential, and insight as to how the right implementation of blockchains and cryptography can solve the problem once and for all.