TAG Certified Channels Still Under One Percent Ad Fraud in Germany
The data tells the story of success in combating IVT as well continuous improvement, including a 47% improvement in TAG Certified Channels over 2019, as well as 88% improvement over similar industry benchmarks. We highlighted the rate of SIVT in desktop video reported by DoubleVerify (5.63%) to demonstrate the inherent risk in not-being TAG certified. The rate of IVT in desktop video that flowed through TAG Channels was just 0.30%.
In our discussions with media executives we asked about the level of IVT that advertisers find acceptable. In 2019, there was zero tolerance. Expectations haven’t changed over the past 12 months. As one Manager of Ad Technology at a leading media holding company stated, “In Germany we are still at zero tolerance regarding IVT.”
Interviewees were asked if the global pandemic led to incremental IVT in 2020, and if so, how did it affect IVT practices (or threats). We heard the following: “We do not see that brand protection had to be reinvented due to COVID-19 but we surely had to change bits of pieces of our general measurements. The number of negative related editorial content has increased by COVID-19. For example there are new keywords, which have to be added to the negative keyword lists.” Another noted that discussions of IVT and fraud in general took a secondary priority to securing revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Publishers are unwilling to accept pre-bid blocking or filters for IVT as they believe their sites are largely free of IVT.
TAG Certified Channels delivered an extremely low rate (0.35%) of IVT fraud across desktop, mobile and video inventory, an impressive benchmark that demonstrates the industry can take steps to materially lower the rate of IVT in campaigns. Interestingly, German publishers believe they don’t have an IVT issue on their sites still, which is a reason why they are unwilling to allow pre-bid blocking and filtering. However, as the DoubleVerify research and benchmark shows, entities, including publishers, that don’t follow TAG’s guidelines but still use filtration have an IVT rate of 2.09%, and in some cases, as in desktop video, the IVT rate is much higher. Meanwhile, advertisers insist that no amount of IVT is acceptable. For this reason we believe that German publishers and the market in general still need more education on the realities of IVT rates and the benefits of accepting existing best practices, which includes adoption of TAG as well as filtering for IVT with certified vendors. Once all entities within the ecosystem adopt these best practices, the IVT rate will be more in line with advertiser expectations.
