The television in a living room could be switched off, the viewer could be absent, or the impression could be generated by a server hundreds of kilometres away. Yet, in the digital advertising ecosystem, an ad can still appear to have completed its journey.
That is the problem confronting connected TV (CTV) advertising as brands compete for premium streaming inventory during India’s festive season. Advertisers are paying for the promise of television-sized attention combined with digital targeting.
But when the supply chain cannot reliably establish which device received an ad, whether the screen was active or where the impression originated, the premium can become a liability.
A campaign analysis by ad-fraud detection firm mFilterit identified a 30% invalid traffic (IVT) rate, with 80% of the identified invalid traffic originating from CTV environments.
For advertisers, that responsiveness makes the big screen attractive. The challenge is ensuring the impressions purchased are genuine.
Amit Relan, co-founder and chief executive of mFilterit, also flagged frequency-cap violations, with just two CTV environments accounting for 81.7% of all violations recorded in the analysis.
These are campaign-level findings, not a market-wide estimate of CTV fraud. But they raise questions about inventory quality at a time when advertisers are committing larger budgets to the medium.
The festive squeeze: When premium inventory runs out
The festive advertising cycle creates a particular tension. Brands want visibility around Diwali, Dussehra and major sporting events, when competition for consumer attention…