Mobile web viewing environments may be safer than desktop viewing in Asia-Pacific, according to a recent IAS report. Although there was a slight increase in optimized ad fraud rates in a few APAC markets, the report highlighted that most remained below 1%. Singapore recorded enhanced fraud rates of 0.9%, Vietnam of 0.5% and Indonesia of 0.4%.
India and New Zealand reported mobile display ad fraud rates of 0.2%, which were unchanged year over year. In terms of mobile web ad fraud rates, Australia saw a slight decline of 0.2 percentage points year-over-year to 0.4%. Japan recorded a decline of 0.6 percentage points year-on-year to 1.7%.
Programmatic purchases through mobile display impressions in Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam had higher ad fraud rates than direct publisher purchases.
This comes as direct publishers begin to use strategies and technologies to reduce ad fraud. While ad fraud will never be 0%, but they are taking active action, an IAS spokesperson explained.
“With programmatic, there are a lot more long-tail sites that don’t have a fraud mitigation strategy in place, so brands and agencies need to rely on a verification solution to reduce risk on their purchases, whether for a brand or performance campaign. Ad fraudsters track cookies, and it’s lucrative, hence the rise. As we enter the season of party shopping and holidays, it’s important for marketers to apply contextual segments to their performance buys to protect their campaigns,” she added.
Globally, mobile campaigns running without fraud protection encountered up to 16 times more ad fraud than fraud-optimized rates.
Ad fraud follows higher ad dollars and CPMs. With the upcoming holiday shopping season, advertisers need to monitor and block fraudulent impressions and apply pre-bid solutions to provide additional protection against ad fraud in programmatic ad transactions.
Meanwhile, invalid traffic (IVT) activity increased almost everywhere. APAC was no exception, with most markets in the region seeing an increase in desktop display ad fraud. Singapore recorded the highest annual increase of 1.9% YoY (YoY) and an overall ad fraud rate of 4.9% in the first half of 2022.
Japan and Vietnam follow with respective ad fraud rates of 3.3% (an increase of 0.7 percentage points year-on-year) and 3.1% (an increase of 1.6 percentage points year-on-year). annual). Desktop display ad fraud rates also increased year-on-year in Australia (1.6%) and New Zealand (0.7%), but fell slightly in India (0.8%).
Asia-Pacific markets led the charge in brand risk reduction
Brand risk rates have remained on a downward trajectory as the adoption of contextual strategies continues to evolve.
Indonesia saw one of the largest reductions in brand risk, with a 3.7% decline on desktop viewing and 3.3% on mobile web viewing.
Despite a slight year-on-year increase, Vietnam had one of the lowest levels of brand risk in the world on mobile web display (0.8%). Brand risk levels on mobile web display in APAC markets remained below the global average of 2.3%.
Around the world, brand risk for display ad purchases was often tied to the violence category. This trend was observed in Australia, Indonesia and Singapore.
In Vietnam, illegal downloads accounted for most of the brand risk, while in India, the main threat was offensive language. This underscores the importance for advertisers to frequently review brand suitability and safety strategies and have an ongoing approach to their campaigns.
Desktop display visibility see increase
With the exception of Japan, all APAC markets saw an increase in viewability in display environments, with Australia recording the highest level of viewability at 74.6%, an increase of 2 .9 percentage points year-over-year. Japan had the lowest desktop viewability at 48.4% compared to the global average of 71.5%. The other APAC markets recorded viewability rates above 60%.
Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam exceeded 65% viewability in mobile app views.
Laura Quigley, SVP APAC at IAS, said, “It is encouraging to see the improvement in the quality of digital media in emerging markets across APAC. Publishers are reviewing their inventory, redesigning their sites to provide greater customer focus and visibility, and implementing critical strategies to avoid risk and reduce fraud. »
“Fraud is on the rise, and regional advertisers need to ensure that we not only monitor, but also block fraud. Unmitigated fraud rates could be 10 times higher than fraud rates when mitigation tactics are used. Advertisers should have robust pre- and post-auction strategies and deploy verification solutions to ensure direct and programmatic exchanged impressions are protected and optimized to deliver maximum impact and ROI.
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