Over the last year, video ad measurement firms have started reporting around 40% or 50% of video ad impressions may not really be viewed by consumers, instead invoked by fraudulent publishers looking to sell inventory. But comScore’s chief research officer Josh Chasin says the problem is over-blown.
“You’ll see headlines, ‘X% of all video inventory is fraudulent’,” Chasin tells Beet.TV. “Oftentimes, that is inflated because of how the company in question tracks video fraud
“Think in terms of dollars as opposed to number of impressions. Most of the fraud is in long-tail, exchange inventory, 300-by-250s, as opposed to in in-player.
“If you’re asking about a premium publisher – one of the TV networks, YouTube or Hulu – and that’s where the money goes – you’re going to see 1%, 2% non-human traffic. It’s not as bad as everyone’s saying.”
We spoke with Chasin at the Beet.TV Video Ad Fraud Leadership Summit where he was panelist.