Study shows programmatic fraud blocking rates are higher on desktop, static banners

RhythmOne’s third quarterly Programmatic Insights Report: Spotlight on Quality, issued Tuesday, looks at blocking and fraud prevention trends across the programmatic marketplace throughout Q4 2017. The company says it processed 2.8 trillion bid requests on average monthly between October and December.

The report reflects trends of blocking by the platform’s filters of both suspicious and under performing inventory.

Three quick takeaways from the report:

• 56 percent of ad inventory on desktop was blocked compared to the much lower rate of 38 percent on mobile for the quarter.
• On average, programmatic video inventory was blocked at slightly higher rates than that of banner ad inventory; 49 percent and 45 percent, respectively.
• On mobile, inventory was blocked significantly more often on mobile web (56 percent) than on in-app mobile inventory (27 percent). The company says fraud on mobile apps is inherently complicated —making detection more varied and more challenging.

Here’s how blocking rates broke down globally by month across devices on the RhythmOne marketplace:

Source: RhythmOne

The report also found that non-standard and less popular ad sizes tend to have lower rates of fraud as scammers seek out scale. The less common extra large video format, for example, was blocked just 5 percent of the time globally, whereas the more popular medium video format had a global blocking rate of 57 percent.

Looking at blocking rates for banner ad sizes in Q4 2017, the 300×250 and 300×600 units both topped 60 percent.

Source: RhythmOne

Market research firm eMarketer estimates that 83.6 percent of US digital ad spend will transact programmatically. Ad fraud has been a perennial problem for digital advertisers, but brand safety concerns have further elevated marketers’ attention to ensuring their ads are seen by real people on acceptable content. A small study released last fall from video advertising marketplace, Teads, found that 93 percent of polled CMOs in the US had begun adjusting their digital advertising strategies due to brand safety concerns.

The RhythmOne report is available via download (registration required).