Ad fraud up 19% YoY for unprotected campaigns, hits 10.9% globally: Report
Ad fraud on non-optimised digital campaigns has surged to a four-year high, while hate speech and offensive content are making up an increasing share of online brand risk, according to a new global report from media measurement firm Integral Ad Science (IAS).
The 20th edition of IAS’s Media Quality Report, draws on more than 280 billion digital interactions daily to provide a snapshot of media quality across display and video ads on desktop, mobile and connected TV platforms. The findings reflect a digital advertising landscape undergoing significant transformation,and growing vulnerability.
Among the most striking revelations is the scale of ad fraud on campaigns that do not use fraud prevention tools. According to IAS, such campaigns saw a 19% rise in fraudulent activity year-on-year, with fraud rates reaching 10.9% globally, a figure 15 times higher than optimised campaigns, where fraud rates dropped to just 0.7%.
Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, said the report underlined “the critical need for proactive media quality strategies” as the online environment becomes increasingly complex.
“As digital media complexity accelerates, IAS remains steadfast in empowering our partners with the transparency, precision and protection they need to succeed,” she said.
While the report notes that overall brand risk, the likelihood of an ad appearing near harmful or inappropriate content, declined by 10.6% globally from 2023 levels, the nature of that risk is shifting. Content flagged for offensive language, hate speech and controversial topics increased by 72% year-on-year, marking the highest levels since 2020.
Viewability, a longstanding metric measuring whether an ad was seen by a user, has largely plateaued, with global rates rising only 1.6% in 2024. However, desktop video formats continued to improve, with viewability climbing 5.4% to a record 83.9%, reflecting sustained demand for digital video across platforms.
With that, the industry appears to be shifting focus towards newer indicators of impact, such as “attention,” a more nuanced metric that factors in environment, user interaction and engagement time to estimate how effectively an ad delivers its message.
Regional trends: APAC and India
In the Asia-Pacific region, fraud levels for optimised campaigns remained stable, with desktop display fraud holding at 1.3% and mobile web video at 0.3%. Desktop video ad fraud dropped from 1.1% to 0.8%, while mobile web display rose modestly from 0.4% to 0.5%.
India, in particular, outperformed the global average in several key areas. Ad fraud for optimised campaigns remained below average, 0.8% on desktop and just 0.2% on mobile web. Time-in-view, a key attention metric, was also higher in India than elsewhere, with desktop display ads averaging 25.33 seconds and mobile web ads averaging 19.65 seconds.
However, the report also highlighted a worrying rise in exposure to violent and offensive content across APAC. On desktop display, the share of brand risk attributed to violent content increased from 43.5% in the first half of 2024 to 54.3% in the second half.
The findings come at a time when advertisers are under growing pressure to ensure both efficiency and ethical responsibility in their media buys, particularly in programmatic environments where inventory is often bought in real time, with little visibility into where ads might appear.
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