LONDON, March 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Pixalate today announced the general availability of its DEFASED (DElisted From the App StorE) pre-bid blocklists for Connected TV (CTV) apps, now identifying which countries each app has been delisted from.
Pixalate's DEFASED blocklists identify more than 21,000 CTV apps removed from the Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, and LG TV app storefronts. The data is delivered as two daily feeds â one covering all delisted apps, and one filtered to delisted apps that are still generating ad impressions, according to Pixalateâs data.
When app stores remove an app, no automated mechanism alerts the ad ecosystem, including SSPs, exchanges, or DSPs. The app disappears from the storefront but can remain installed on millions of devices.
Malicious actors can exploit these delisted apps to generate invalid traffic (IVT) or harvest user data without platform oversight. Pixalate's DEFASED blocklists fill that gap.
DEFASED Apps: A Granular Risk Signal For Ad Tech
Pixalate surfaces granular micro risk signals â individual, measurable indicators of risk across the programmatic supply chain. Delisted apps (DEFASED) are one of these signals, alongside 40+ IVT types, Made for Advertising (MFA) flagging, abandoned apps, fraudulent CTV Bundle IDs, SSAI fraud, privacy compliance failure checks, arbitrage transaction flagging, and more.
Apps can be removed from stores for benign reasons, but also for reasons including:
- Ad Fraud & Malicious Activity: Malware, adware, IVT, compromised SDKs, deceptive behavior, or manipulated reviews â including cases tied to developer account termination.
- Privacy, Policy & Compliance: Non-compliance with store privacy guidelines, missing privacy policies, copyright violations, government-mandated removal, or sanctions compliance requirements.
New: Country-Level Delisted App Intelligence
An app removed from one countryâs app store may still be available in the same store in…