🚨 Rich Kahn Sounds Off on CTV Fraud: Why IVT Filters Aren’t Cutting It

💬 “The problem is that most people that use an IVT filter on CTV use an API filter… which only judges traffic on a couple of data points… which is not enough to find the most sophisticated invalid traffic.”

Rich Kahn, CEO of Anura Solutions, isn’t pulling punches. He’s calling out the gaping holes in how Connected TV fraud is being handled.

🔍 His argument? The industry’s go-to method—API-based filtering—is like trying to catch a bank robber with a blurry security cam. It only skims a few data points, leaving the real fraudsters waltzing through the system.

“To do a TRUE SIVT filter, you need to run JavaScript to collect hundreds of data points to determine SIVT.”

📜 Translation: If you’re serious about stopping fraud, you need deep forensic-level analysis, not surface-level snapshots. Some IVT solutions have secured MRC accreditation, but if they’re only grabbing a handful of data points, Kahn says they’re not equipped to catch the most sophisticated fraud.

⚠️ The Catch: This is exactly why CTV is still a goldmine for fraudsters. Weak filters mean high fraud rates, and the industry isn’t moving fast enough to plug the gaps.

🔥 The Big Question: If the tech exists to detect sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) properly, why are so many companies still relying on weak, outdated methods?

🎤 Industry Response: Silence? Pushback? More PR spin? We’ll see if the big players step up—or keep pretending API filters are enough.

— Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder, Anura Solutions

💰 Big Spending, Bigger Waste: The Alarming Scale of CTV Ad Fraud

Advertisers have poured billions into connected TV (CTV), lured by the promise of premium, data-driven audience targeting. But beneath the glossy sales decks lies a harsh reality: CTV ad fraud is rampant, and the financial consequences are staggering.

📊 The Numbers Paint a Grim Picture

• $30 billion lost annually to ad fraud in the U.S.

• $100–$120 billion in global ad fraud losses.

• 69% increase in CTV bot fraud in 2022 compared to the prior year.

• Up to 38% invalid traffic rate in certain regions.

Fraudsters are thriving in the rapidly expanding CTV marketplace, exploiting its fragmented infrastructure and high CPMs. The number of CTV fraud schemes has tripled since 2020, and unprotected advertisers face a fraud rate nearly 18 times higher than those with rigorous protections. In some cases, fraudulent traffic volumes exceeded 2 billion ad requests per month in Q4 2024.

🚨 An Industry Struggling to Keep Up

Despite the growing scale of the issue, enforcement remains weak. Experts warn that the industry’s current approach resembles a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole—for every fraudulent scheme detected, another emerges in its place.

As Zach Lain, director of global data partnerships at PepsiCo, bluntly put it:
"When we find fraud, we as an industry don’t really know what to do."

Meanwhile, fraudsters have become increasingly sophisticated. In one case, bad actors spoofed $40–$50 CTV impressions—not on a television, but on a single pixel on a smart refrigerator.

🔥 Beyond Advertisers: The Cost to Publishers

This is not just a brand-side issue. Fraudulent impressions siphon revenue from legitimate publishers, with estimates suggesting annual losses exceeding $150 million. As ad buyers grow warier of CTV’s reliability, premium streaming networks could suffer long-term consequences.

🛡️ The Path Forward

With fraud detection firms struggling to keep pace, calls for stronger industry-wide measures are growing louder. Experts advocate for more stringent verification standards, real-time monitoring, and punitive actions against bad actors.

The message is clear: CTV remains a powerful advertising channel, but without better oversight, the financial risks may soon outweigh the rewards.

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🤡 Your Ads Are Playing to Ghosts

Ah, Connected TV advertising. The modern marketing miracle. A dream scenario where brands get the best of both worlds—the immersive impact of television with the precision and data-driven efficiency of digital. The biggest screen in the house, the holy grail of media placement, a premium space where audiences are engaged, leaning back, and—at least in theory—watching.

At least, that’s the fantasy advertisers are sold.

The reality? Your beautifully crafted, data-optimized, audience-segmented CTV ad isn’t landing in prime-time television slots or reaching high-value consumers curled up on their couches. It’s being served to a smart fridge.

Yes, you read that correctly. Somewhere, right now, your $75 CPM ad is playing on a single pixel of a hacked appliance. The refrigerator, I assume, is unimpressed. It has no disposable income, no interest in your luxury SUV lease offer, and no intention of converting into a paying customer.

But it’s not just the fridges. Your ad could be playing on a Roku device that hasn’t been touched in weeks, but somehow keeps serving impressions. Or maybe it’s looping endlessly in a half-abandoned streaming app that hasn’t been updated since the Obama administration. Or worse—it’s filling space inside an obscure, ad-ridden “relaxation channel” designed for anxious dogs whose human owners left for work eight hours ago.

This is what CTV advertising has become: a premium-priced illusion.

Welcome to the Haunted House of CTV Fraud

You might think, surely, someone is stopping this. Surely, there are guardrails in place, industry standards, verification tools that flag this kind of nonsense before it drains millions of dollars out of a brand’s budget.

You’d think.

Instead, the industry has decided to play along. Everyone is making too much money for it to stop. The exchanges take their cut. The networks get their revenue. The fraudsters get paid. Even the so-called verification vendors, who are supposed to be the last line of defense, seem content to let it slide—so long as the fraud isn’t too obvious. A little cleanup here, a flagged domain there, and the rest gets quietly waved through.

And why wouldn’t they? The reports look amazing. So many impressions! So much reach! Your agency emails you a glowing campaign recap—billions of views, millions of households reached, unprecedented engagement.

Just don’t ask where your ads actually ran.

Because if you start asking those questions, you’ll quickly learn that your high-value, data-driven audience targeting is leading to some very, very strange places. That top-performing CTV campaign? A suspiciously high percentage of those impressions might have come from an Albanian Sudoku app, running on a first-generation Fire Stick buried in someone’s junk drawer. Or a 24/7 stream of dolphin sounds designed to calm anxious cats.

That’s the game. A massive, industry-wide charade where brands keep spending, agencies keep billing, and the fraudsters keep outpacing whatever weak, reactive safeguards are in place.

The Industry’s Favorite Strategy: Pretend It’s Fine

There’s a reason no one really wants to talk about this. If the full scope of CTV fraud were acknowledged, it would mean admitting that a massive portion of the money flowing through this industry is being set on fire. That those beautiful, glowing reports? They’re fiction. That those billions of “premium” impressions? A statistically significant number of them never actually reached a human.

And here’s where it gets even worse—fraudsters aren’t just faking impressions anymore. They’ve gotten smarter. They’re building bots that behave like real viewers. They pause. They rewind. They switch channels just enough to appear lifelike. They are, in some ways, the perfect audience—they never complain, they never skip, they never turn the TV off.

And yet, advertisers keep spending. Because acknowledging the problem means admitting that those stunning CPMs, that incredible scale, that supposed precision targeting—it was all an illusion. And no one wants to be the first to admit they’ve been had.

Your Budget Deserves an Exorcism

So what’s next? Will brands demand better? Will agencies push for real accountability? Will the industry finally, after years of shrugging and looking the other way, take actual steps to clean this up?

Unlikely.

Because the truth is, most advertisers don’t want to know. The illusion is too comfortable. The dashboards look too good. The numbers—however meaningless—are just too big and impressive to question.

So, they’ll keep spending. The fraudsters will keep evolving. And the cycle will continue, a billion-dollar ghost story with no end in sight.

Meanwhile, your actual audience?

They’re watching something else entirely.

Step right up to the Great Connected TV Swindle! Where ad budgets disappear faster than a VC’s moral compass and the only thing premium about your inventory is the price tag.

You thought you were buying high-quality, viewable placements?

Adorable.

Instead, you’ve been feeding a fraud machine so well-oiled it makes Wall Street look like a charity bake sale.

Everyone’s cashing in—except you, of course.

So buckle up (actually, scratch that—grab a drink).

This ride’s about to get bumpy. And if you think this is bad, wait until you see what’s lurking in the paid section.

The real horror show starts there.

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