Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today (9 October) introduced the ad industry’s first ad fraud Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) technology, a powerful addition to Pixalate’s Analytics platform. The breakthrough Ad Fraud SPO technology enables buyers and sellers to pick higher quality paths of delivering programmatic ads across CTV, mobile apps, and websites, and work with partners who perform the best in terms of IVT and other metrics.

Pixalate analysis reveals that overall IVT increases by 17% when an impression goes through 3 hops instead of 1 or 2. IVT increases by 75% when going through 4 hops and 71% through an incomplete path (a path in which every link in the chain does not use the SupplyChain Object). Of complete paths, desktop web is at the highest risk of arbitrage with 1.46 hops per impression, followed by mobile web (1.42), mobile in-app (1.24) and CTV (1.12).

Pixalate is the first company to leverage the IAB Tech Lab’s SupplyChain Object (SCO) and sellers.json standards for a complete view of the programmatic ad supply chain from ad fraud, inventory quality, and arbitrage risk perspectives. This is a major step toward the industry’s quest for complete SPO, which has become an urgent need due to the growing number of intermediaries in the ad tech supply chain coupled with the challenge of minimal transparency. Pixalate’s Ad Fraud SPO technology enables users to analyse supply paths in multiple ways, including full path, complete path, entry points, single nodes and hops to identify the best paths to transact on.

“A lack of transparency has been a consistent thorn in the side of the digital ad supply chain,” said Amin Bandeali, CTO of Pixalate. “We’re thrilled to empower industry stakeholders with the ability to track the breadcrumbs of ad fraud in their supply chains for the first time in advertising history.”

Pixalate’s new Ad Fraud SPO technology will make it easier to gain insights and detect lower-quality inventory sources. Moreover, the platform will allow clients to quickly react to potential spoofing and unearth new ad fraud schemes. Through Pixalate’s Analytics dashboard, users will be able to visualise all data in a clear and more actionable manner.

“Supply Path Optimisation is a crucial step in creating a transparent and safe digital ad ecosystem,” said Ian Trider, VP of RTB Platform Operations at Basis Technologies. “Pixalate has created unique technology for deeply analysing the risk factors in the entire programmatic ad supply chain, which will aid the digital media industry’s efforts to stamp out ad fraud.”

“I spent the last several years at the IAB Tech lab working on transparency standards, including sellers.json and SupplyChain Object, and it’s great to see them utilised in a practical way to combat ad fraud at scale,” said Amit Shetty, Pixalate’s VP of Product Management, Ad Fraud, and former VP at the IAB Tech Lab. “The Pixalate Analytics platform now gives customers granular and actionable data, based on big data analysis of the SCO, to ensure the cleanest supply paths.”