#frequencycapviolations

OTT advertising seems to be a safe bet right now. Brands are moving serious budgets here to reach a wider segment of audience at once.  

In 2025, 28% of total digital ad spend in India was heavily driven towards OTT platforms and video content.

But what if we told you that the audience pool that you are reaching right now is limited? The numbers that you see on your dashboard are not always true.  

This is exactly what came to light during a recent campaign analysis we conducted for a large automotive brand running video ads across two of India’s leading OTT platforms

Approximately, $1.14 billion in global CTV open programmatic ad spend was lost to invalid traffic in Q2 2024. This highlights the gravity of ad fraud in the CTV ecosystem. CTV ad fraud causes inflation in ad campaign metrics of CTV ads due to invalid traffic, bot-driven engagement, and app spoofing. Some of the most common CTV ad fraud include:  

Invalid or Bot Traffic: That does not come from a genuine user, including traffic generated by data centers (DCH), automated clicks, and other non-human sources. Bots generate fake ad views or clicks, making it appear as though there is legitimate engagement from real users. 

Device Spoofing via: Creating fake CTV devices or apps to mimic real ones. It often tricks advertisers into buying ads on non-existent or fraudulent platforms. 

VPN/DCH: Traffic coming from Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or data centers, is often used to hide the true location of the user and generate fake engagement from non-targeted regions. 

CTV ad fraud also includes device spoofing, running ads through secondary devices while the TV is off, and invalid server-side ad insertion (SSAI).