Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS), one of the leading global media measurement and optimization platforms, released the 20th edition of its Media Quality Report (MQR).
The MQR, which captures insights from over 280 billion daily digital interactions worldwide, provides advertisers and publishers with essential benchmarks for display and video ad formats on desktop, mobile web, mobile app, and connected TV (CTV) environments, to measure the quality and effectiveness of their campaigns and digital media inventory. This year’s report highlights the evolving dynamics of the digital advertising landscape with a focus on the open web. Key highlights include a significant increase in fraud rates for non-optimized ads, a rise in the proportion of brand risks related to offensive language and hate speech, and a stabilization of ad viewability rates as marketers adopt new metrics such as attention.
“As digital media complexity accelerates, IAS remains steadfast in empowering our partners with the transparency, accuracy, and protection they need to succeed,” says Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS. “The 20th edition of the MQR underscores the critical need for proactive media quality strategies to ensure marketers can drive performance while protecting their brands from the evolving and multifaceted risks in the programmatic advertising landscape.”
Key global findings from the 20th edition of the MQR:
- Ad fraud rates 15x higher for non-optimized campaigns: The MQR reveals that fraud rates for campaigns without fraud mitigation strategies (non-optimized) increased 19.0% year over year – peaking at a four-year high of 10.9% by the end of 2024. The fraud rate for non-optimized campaigns was 15 times higher than for campaigns that utilized anti-fraud technologies. Despite increasing sophistication among bad actors, campaigns that implemented fraud protection remained largely safeguarded, with optimized campaign fraud rates decreasing 9.8% year over year globally to a steady 0.7%.
- Offensive language, controversial content, and hate speech on the rise: While global brand risk declined by 10.6% compared to 2023 (and 39% compared to 2021) to a record low of 1.5%, the nature of brand risk is changing. The share of content flagged for offensive language, controversial content, and hate speech on the open web increased to the highest levels seen since 2020. Globally, the share of offensive content increased 72% year over year, highlighting the evolving nature of online risk.
- Global viewability rates stabilize: After years of consistent increases, global viewability rates plateaued in 2024, rising just 1.6% year over year. Notably, desktop video viewability increased 5.4%, reaching a record 83.9%, reflecting the continued growth of digital video consumption across channels – both emerging and more traditional. While overall viewability remains high, marketers are beginning to prioritize additional ad effectiveness measures like attention. By considering situational factors, such as an ad’s environment, along with interactions like clicks or eye movements, attention can better gauge the extent to which impressions drive brand messaging, enabling advertisers to optimize for business outcomes.
Highlights from Brazil in the MQR:
- Fraud mitigation strategies work well in the country: Despite an increase in fraud incidence for unprotected campaigns, anti-fraud ad optimization strategies proved highly effective. Performance in Brazil was slightly better than the global average, with a fraud rate of 0.7% for optimized campaigns in the country compared to a global average of 1.1%.
- Engagement tends to be higher in Brazil, especially in mobile formats: Ad viewability and ad display time rates in Brazil were above global averages for both metrics. The most significant difference, in both cases, occurred in Mobile App Display ads, which in Brazil had an average viewability of 82.8% throughout 2024, compared to the global average of 74.2%. Meanwhile, ad display time in Brazil, for the same format, was 17.96 seconds for local campaigns versus 13.11 seconds globally.
- Violence, offensive language, and illegal downloads lead brand risk occurrences in Brazil. The overall incidence of content flagged as brand risk in Brazil decreased by approximately 20% compared to the index observed by IAS in 2023, closing last year at a rate of 1.2%. Compared to global indicators, the most interesting findings concern discrepancies in content categories.
- Higher Risk in Brazil:
- Violence: Brazil shows significantly higher brand risk for “Violence” (59.0%) compared to the global average (42.7%), with a difference of 16.3 percentage points.
- Offensive Language and Controversial Content: Brazil also has noticeably higher risk in this category (13.3%) versus the global average (8.2%), showing a difference of 5.1 percentage points.
- Illegal Downloads: The risk associated with “Illegal Downloads” is higher in Brazil (7.2%) compared to the global average (2.8%), with a difference of 4.4 percentage points.
- Adult: Brazil shows slightly higher risk for “Adult” content (16.8%) compared to the global average (14.8%), with a difference of 2 percentage points.
- Lower Risk in Brazil:
- Alcohol: Brazil shows considerably lower brand risk for “Alcohol” (0.9%) compared to the global average (10.7%), with a substantial difference of -9.8 percentage points.
- Illegal Drugs: The risk associated with “Illegal Drugs” is also much lower in Brazil (1.0%) compared to the global average (10.4%), showing a difference of -9.4 percentage points.
- Hate Speech: Brazil has lower risk for “Hate Speech” (1.8%) compared to the global average (10.4%), with a difference of -8.6 percentage points.
In its 20th edition, the MQR continues to serve as the trusted global standard for actionable insights on digital media quality. As the digital ecosystem rapidly evolves with advances in AI, shifts in consumer behavior, and a move toward performance-driven strategies, these insights continue to help advertisers, publishers, and platforms navigate these challenges and achieve superior results. The IAS Research team analyzed over 280 billion digital interactions captured daily by IAS at the impression level to create the Media Quality Report.
Download the IAS Media Quality Report here (in English).
