4 Questions to Uncover Programmatic Ad Fraud

The scale of programmatic ad fraud is staggering, with the ANA’s Q2 2025 Programmatic Transparency Benchmark revealing that $26.8 billion in global media value evaporates annually due to supply-chain inefficiencies, fraud, and low-quality inventory. While connected TV (CTV) has emerged as one of digital advertising’s fastest-growing channels, it has also become a prime target for fraudsters who exploit detection systems that lag behind spending.

Many marketers believe sophisticated fraud itself is the greatest risk. In reality, the bigger danger lies in the passive assumption that someone else,a demand-side platform (DSP), agency, or publisher,has the problem under control. This mindset lets budgets leak steadily, campaign after campaign, rather than through a single catastrophic buy. Uncovering fraud doesn’t require deep technical expertise; it demands asking the right questions and insisting on concrete answers.

Here are four critical questions every programmatic advertiser should ask, with answers that grow tougher,and more vital,as campaigns shift from display to video to CTV.

1. Where is my ad actually running?

Understanding where your ad ends up starts with tracing its path through the supply chain: middlemen, exchanges, resellers, and verification layers. The more hops in that chain, the less clarity you have on what you purchased.

For display ads, which run on websites and inside apps, ask your partner to detail the supply path. Is inventory sourced directly from trusted publishers, or does it pass through a long line of open-exchange resellers? Page-level quality signals,like ad density, refresh rate, and content quality,are becoming increasingly accessible. Push your partners toward tools that surface this granular data.

With video ads, add another layer: What type of player loaded the impression? An autoplay in a muted corner of a webpage is not equivalent to a pre-roll on a premium video property, yet both may appear on your invoice at similar prices. Apply the same page-level scrutiny to video in web environments.

CTV presents a unique challenge, as ads run inside apps,publisher apps like NBC and ESPN, streaming platforms like Hulu, Max, and Paramount+, and free ad-supported services like Pluto TV and Tubi. The key question shifts: Which app claimed the impression, and was it legitimate? Fraudsters spoof both devices and apps, running impressions on server farms that impersonate Roku or Fire TV devices within premium apps. Demand specifics on app-level and device-level verification from your partner, along with a breakdown of which apps constitute the bulk of your spend.

2. Who is verifying the traffic?

Bot detection for display is mature, with independent verification vendors refining their filters over years. Baseline traffic hygiene on most DSPs is generally solid out of the box.

Video is trickier due to its varied environments. Vendors can reliably track viewability, but catching sophisticated bots that mimic real viewing behavior requires more effort.

CTV remains a soft spot. Having observed this pattern for two decades, I’ve seen fraudsters follow the money whenever a channel scales faster than detection can keep pace. DoubleVerify’s 2025 Global Insights Report underscores this: bot-driven activity accounted for 65% of CTV fraud, with an estimated four million infected devices generating fake traffic daily. Fewer independent vendors offer reliable CTV detection, and bad actors exploit this gap. Don’t settle for vague reassurances that “fraud is filtered.” Ask specifically about your partner’s CTV fraud detection methods, which vendors perform the filtering, and what percentage of your CTV impressions were removed last quarter. If no one can produce that number, you’re not being measured,you’re being told a story.

3. Is someone actually looking at the placement data?

Most marketers don’t want to live inside placement reports, which is understandable given their density. But you should know what your partner examines, how often, and what triggers a flag.

For display, site-level placement data should be a baseline output. If your partner provides summaries without naming where impressions ran, push for more detail or ask for a walkthrough. For video, publisher and placement reporting often get lost in vague categories,request it by line item.

Staying current is crucial. Earlier in 2025, low-quality sites built to capture ad dollars were the industry’s top placement concern, with hundreds of millions in open exchange spend flowing to those domains. The industry responded with better detection, tighter inclusion lists, and shared research from firms like Jounce Media, driving that exposure down significantly. However, threats evolve. Jounce’s mid-2025 research found that unnecessary resale layers in the supply path have now overtaken low-quality inventory as the primary source of waste in programmatic. This ties directly back to the supply-path question: the more middlemen between you and the publisher, the more budget leaks before your ad reaches a real person.

On CTV, app and network breakouts are frequently aggregated in ways that hide the real inventory composition. You can’t spot these issues in a summary. You need a partner who pulls the details and flags anomalies.

4. How curated are my direct deals?

The open marketplace is a broad, anyone-can-bid layer of programmatic. Direct deals and private marketplaces, accessed through a deal ID, are pre-arranged buys. The assumption is that a deal ID guarantees vetted, quality inventory,but that deserves scrutiny.

On average, private marketplaces run more cleanly than open exchanges, as confirmed by the ANA’s ongoing Programmatic Transparency Benchmark. However, averages hide a wide range. The same research shows that the least disciplined advertisers still face significant exposure to low-quality, made-for-advertising inventory within their curated deals, while the most disciplined run nearly clean. The difference isn’t the deal ID; it’s the curation behind it.

For display and video, ask your partner what goes into their private marketplace deals. Are they using page-level quality signals and third-party data to screen inventory, or are they bundling whatever the publisher offered and calling it curated? With CTV, direct deals with major networks, streaming platforms, and free streaming apps remain the cleanest path, but a deal ID with no curation behind it is a label, not a guarantee.

The ANA’s most recent benchmark, published in February 2026, found that top-performing advertisers converted nearly 57% of their programmatic spend into fraud-free, viewable, quality impressions. Lagging advertisers converted less than 38 percent. That gap isn’t a measurement quirk,it’s the price of real curation.

Why disciplined advertisers win

Fraud-proofing is not a one-and-done setup task but an ongoing discipline. Start with an allowlist of vetted sites, apps, and networks built from curated deals with partners doing real, page-level quality work. Treat blocklists as a reactive backstop, not a strategy. Watch your own incentives: cheap CPMs buy you the cheapest impressions. When a performance metric looks too good, treat the spike as a signal, not a win. The advertisers who consistently ask these questions are the ones who know what their media is actually worth,whether for display, video, or, most critically, CTV.