Dive Brief:

• Integral Ad Science’s latest quarterly Media Quality Report found ad fraud down almost 3%.
• However, the report also found that ad viewability is down more than 5%.
• Another nugget of interest for marketers: the report also uncovered programmatic platforms have a greater risk of fraud.

Dive Insight:

Integral Ad Science released its second-quarter Media Quality Report, and shedding light on ad fraud, it disclosed it had slipped from just over 14% to 11.2%. These figures include non-human bot traffic as well as ads that couldn’t be viewed such as ads stacked on top of each other. Fraud is much lower for publishers at 3.7% against 14.1% for networks because publishers have more control over which ads appear according to Integral Ad Science Senior Vice President Kiril Tsemekhman.

Meanwhile, viewability is also down at 44% compared to 49.4% from the previous report. Viewability is calculated by the standard that half of the ad’s pixels had to be viewable for at least one second.

Tsemekhman explained to Venture Beat that given the viewability numbers, it means more than half of all online ads aren't on screens completely enough or long enough for actual viewers to see.