Ad fraud rates decrease in desktop and mobile web display in India: Report

• Brand risk and ad fraud rates in India ranked below the global average.
• Viewability on mobile environments increased in India.

Today, Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS) released its Media Quality Report (MQR) for H1 2021, providing transparency into the performance and quality of Indian digital media, alongside global comparisons. The latest MQR highlights brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability trends across display, video, mobile web, and in-app advertising.

Mobile campaigns in India post lower brand risks than display
Brand risk worldwide was lower across all formats and environments in H1 2021, an indicator of brands’ increased efforts to optimise ad placements toward contextually relevant content. The overall brand risk dropped below 4% across all formats and environments. In India, display was one of the safest environments for advertisers, with desktop display brand risk at 0.8%, down by 1.4 percentage points (pp). Mobile web display brand risk fell from 2.6% to 1.8%, while the worldwide average was 2.6%. Programmatic desktop and mobile web display inventory showed higher brand risk in India than publisher direct at 1.8% and 3.5%, respectively. This data suggests the market is actively using solutions to protect brand reputation and place its ads in suitable environments.

Viewability on mobile environments increased in India

Mobile campaigns in India had more viewable impressions in H1 2021. Viewability on mobile web display increased by 1 percentage point to 58.9% in H1 2021, while viewability on mobile in-app display increased from 51.3% to 54.1%. Global display viewability was down 2.4 percentage points on desktop and 3.3pp on mobile web year-over-year, reaching 69.5% and 64.3%, respectively. The worldwide reductions were driven by drops across Asia-Pacific, with India registering a 7.2 percentage point drop to post 54.9% viewability in desktop environments. In India, desktop and mobile display environments showed significantly higher viewability rates in programmatically traded inventory than publisher direct. Connected TV (CTV) remained the most viewable format overall, averaging 93.2% worldwide in H1 2021.

Ad fraud rates decrease in desktop and mobile web display in India

Both desktop and mobile web display had a marginal decrease in optimised ad fraud rates to reach 0.9% and 0.2%, respectively, in H1 2021. The worldwide non-optimised fraud rate for desktop display was 9.4% and 5.5% on mobile web display, clearly indicating that fraud mitigation strategies can reduce risks and reduce ad wastage.

Saurabh Khattar, Commercial Lead India, IAS, said, “Mobile advertising has gained strong traction among Indian advertisers as consumers continue to spend more time engaging with content on mobile. According to a report by App Annie, average smartphone usage is about 4.6 hours a day in India, which stands third in global rankings after Indonesia and Brazil. As spending increases on mobile, media quality challenges may arise such as ad fraud, unsafe brand environments, and unviewable inventory. With the upcoming festival buying period, advertisers are well-advised to work with third-party verification companies to help protect their campaigns from ad fraud, brand risks, and lower viewability to maximise engagement and ROI”.