DoubleVerify’s fraud lab has identified and blocked “ParrotTerra,” a new CTV fraud scheme that the company says is the channel’s biggest to date. Prior to ParrotTerra, that honor was held for just two months by “StreamScam,” which Oracle revealed in December and which DV refers to as LeoTerra.
With ParrotTerra, according to DV, fraudsters set up counterfeit server-side ad insertion (SSAI) servers to generate fake CTV inventory across countless apps, IPs and devices. However, ParrotTerra’s size is unprecedented for an SSAI scheme, including Oracle’s StreamScam, which had previously spoofed more devices and IPs than any other SSAI scheme. Before DV detected and blocked ParrotTerra, it was scaling as many as 3.7 million device signatures each day and 2.7 million IP addresses — triple the size of StreamScam.
Identifying and blocking fraud is critical in CTV, where typical CPMs are sky high at over $20. Every time a scheme increases in size, fraudsters are getting more money for themselves and increasing the financial damage to the ecosystem. Based on its size, ParrotTerra could have defrauded advertisers and publishers of millions of dollars if left undetected.
While not in its official report, DoubleVerify shared over email that the scheme was on track to steal between $30-$50 million from the ecosystem. For comparison, StreamScam stole $14.5 million.
According to DV’s report, although ParrotTerra has many similarities to its predecessors, it also shows how fraudsters are evolving. Historically, SSAI schemes generate impressions at a fairly slow and steady pace. But ParrotTerra began by testing its manipulation on a smaller scale before quickly progressing into high volumes.
“This is likely an attempt by the fraudsters to try and identify a path that DV would not detect, before they start to scale their operation,” says DV’s fraud lab.
CTV ad fraud is a growing problem. From a lack of transparency, with advertisers not knowing what apps or content they advertise on, to gaps in measurement as VPAID isn’t supported by CTV devices and app-ads.txt has low adoption, the rising frequency and size of fraud schemes could threaten advertiser interest in the channel.
According to DV’s report, beyond ParrotTerra, they are now detecting well over 500,000 individual fraudulent CTV devices every day.
