While connected TV (CTV) ad spend has grown rapidly over the past six years, fraud has remained a persistent concern. CTV is an attractive target for fraudsters, thanks to the high prices CTV inventory commands, and bad actors have been able to exploit weaknesses and gaps in the signals that are passed from sellers to buyers, making it hard to spot when fraud is occurring.
Today IAB Tech Lab, a non-profit consortium which creates technologies and standards for the digital media ecosystem, has launched a new capability designed to help crack down on one prevalent type of fraud called device spoofing. Tech Lab says that ‘Device Attestation’, a new feature within its Open Measurement SDK, will give a secure way for sellers to signal which device an impression is being shown on, giving buyers more confidence that what they’re buying really is CTV inventory.
Creating a trusted signal
Device spoofing occurs when fraudsters falsify the device information associated with an ad impression, making it look like that impression is being served on a different device from where it’s actually appearing. For example, a bad actor might make it look like an impression is being served on a smart TV, positioning it as CTV inventory, when in fact it’s running on a laptop. “Device spoofing is a significant attack vector for bad actors generating invalid traffic across several General and Sophisticated IVT categories required to be detected and filtered as part of MRC Standards,” said Ron Pinelli, SVP digital research and standards at the Media Rating Council, a US body which audits and accredits measurement products and data sources.
It can occur on different types of devices, but it’s a particularly big problem for CTV. Again, buyers attach high value to CTV inventory, so it’s a popular tactic for fraudsters to make fake impressions look like they’re running on TV sets (or perhaps make real impressions running on other devices look like they’re playing on a smart TV).
Device Attestation aims to counter this practice. It adapts the Privacy Pass Protocol, a system developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which allows a client to verify information while preserving anonymity, for the digital ads verification use case. Tech Lab says this enables device manufacturers to attest that an impression really is being served on one of their devices, creating a signal which can be passed through to the buyer.
It sits within the Open Measurement SDK, a toolkit designed to facilitate third-party viewability and verification measurement across different video and native app environments. OM SDK has been expanding into CTV since 2022. At launch, the capability is supported on Apple devices and Fire TV.
“The Device Attestation capability builds on that and provides a critical next step for CTV growth,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab. “Buyers should prioritise the OM SDK because it is the only measurement standard built on device-native signals, not inferred data. And with attestation, they can be confident the inventory they are measuring is real.”
Another mole gets whacked
Geoff Stupay, SVP and global head of product at ad fraud protection specialist HUMAN, said that Device Attestation represents a “fundamental shift” in the fight against device spoofing. Stupay added that the new capability will help buyers “confidently identify quality CTV and mobile inventory, and give sellers a way to differentiate their trusted supply paths”.
In the fight against CTV ad fraud, device spoofing is just one part of the picture. Even if buyers are confident that an impression is running on a real CTV device, there are still means for bad actors to misrepresent the app or content which the ad is running on, or to run ads which never actually appear on the TV screen, among other things. It’s often said that cracking down on ad fraud is a game of whack-a-mole — you stamp out one specific scheme or methodology, and another pops up.
But if Device Attestation gives agencies and brands assurance that they are at least buying an ad which will run on a CTV device, that’s certainly a significant step. One key priority now will be adoption — for more device manufacturers to get on board, giving a wider coverage of the market, and for buyers and buying platforms to ensure they’re actually checking this new signal and optimising towards it.
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