A 7-Figure Ad Fraud Scheme Running on Roku Underlines Murkiness of CTV

Roku has yet again found itself at the center of an ad fraud scheme that likely cost premium brands and political advertisers upwards of seven figures, according to new research from Pixalate.

Marketers were led to believe their ads appeared against brand-safe content on the streaming service, such as The Three Stooges, when in reality they were buying ads in screensaver apps or apps for lonely pets when their owners aren’t home, Pixalate has found. A spokesperson told Adweek the scheme netted “at least a seven-figure dollar amount.”

Let’s call it the Publisher’s Paradox.

Over the last two weeks, all kinds of sites (from news sites to platforms) have seen traffic numbers jump. It makes sense, as people are looking for information around the coronavirus, as well as spending more time online because we’re working from home.

But the challenge is that news organizations cannot monetize this bump.

Editors at Sports Illustrated had just nearly put the magazine to bed when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on March 11. From there, the game that pitted Gobert’s team against the Oklahoma City Thunder was postponed and, soon after, the NBA suspended its 2019-2020 season indefinitely.

Suddenly, SI’s upcoming magazine issue, with a cover featuring an NBA star and a focus on the playoffs (which editors may use later), wasn’t very timely.

“It became very clear that we had to change gears at the last minute,” said Stephen Cannella, co-editor in chief of Sports Illustrated.

Publishers of mainstream media outlets who spoke to Adweek on background in recent days have said it’s too early to tell just how much the digital ad industry will be affected by the coronavirus pandemic—or even precisely when it will be able to count on the market returning to normal. It’s taken constant contact with their respective boards, investors and industry forecasters to determine how their businesses should respond.

The Spotify COVID-19 Music Relief project will recommend charities such as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ MusiCares Foundation and the British organizations PRS Foundation and Help Musicians. Spotify said it will match up to $10 million in combined donations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is putting Microsoft’s artificial intelligence capabilities to potentially life-or-death use.

The health agency tapped the computer giant’s technology to build a chatbot, called Clara, that asks potential coronavirus patients a series of questions in hopes of screening whether or not they are suffering from symptoms of COVID-19, assessing risk factors and disseminating relevant information. The bot is built on Microsoft Azure’s Healthcare Bot service, a virtual AI-powered medical assistant already in use at major hospitals across the U.S.

Apple has positioned itself as a champion of user privacy, and this week it announced the full blocking of third-party cookies in its web browser Safari, two years ahead of rival offering Google Chrome.

It’s the latest move in the rollout of its intelligent tracking prevention plan, and closes earlier loopholes in Apple’s cross-site tracking policies and will cause publishers further difficulty in monetizing Safari users.

Conventional wisdom finds that niche publications with a dedicated audience have a little more protection from the whims of a topsy-turvy ad environment, as such readers are valuable to specific advertisers and also loyal enough to pony up for a subscription.

But what happens to those media businesses when their coverage is centered around an industry powered by live sports events that have been canceled or postponed indefinitely by the spread of the coronavirus?

“As this pause in live sports carries on, all of these leagues are trying to get creative with ways to spotlight different things,” such as esports broadcasts, said Joe Caporoso, svp of content and brand platforms for Whistle, which has produced content in the overlap of gaming and sports.

Among those millions of hours watched last Sunday was the Bahrain Virtual Grand Prix, a creative way to provide content in the absence of traditional racing. Formula One partnered with Veloce Esports, which ran an event for the Australian Grand Prix the previous weekend and made the event official in Bahrain.