The companies have said they will be working on the technical integration over the coming months and expect viewability and Invalid Traffic verification solutions to be available for customers in Q1 2023, followed by brand safety and suitability solutions later on.

Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, said: “Over the past decade, the team at Netflix has done a tremendous job building one of the most popular streaming services in the world.

“As we continue to expand our coverage across premium video and CTV environments, DV is thrilled to extend our third-party verification solutions across their platform, ensuring campaigns meet key quality criteria while maximizing performance and outcomes for advertisers.”

Jeremi Gorman, President of Worldwide Advertising at Netflix, commented: “We’re thrilled to partner with DoubleVerify. As we introduce the Basic with Ads plan – our new ad-supported tier – we recognize the importance for brands to measure how their ads perform. DoubleVerify will provide viewability and IVT verifications that will be valuable for their marketing goals.”

ViperBot works by verification stripping – fraudsters removing the verification tags previously set by a measurement provider. DoubleVerify notes that while this approach to ad fraud can normally be identified by advanced measurement companies, in this case the fraudsters have “taken verification stripping to the next level.” By stripping the code that verifies ad impression and then hiding and redirecting this code through cheap ad slots on real devices, ViperBot was able to hide its fraudulent activity.

DoubleVerify has called this technique ‘verification redirection’ and has blocked the falsified impressions and ad requests for customers of its platform.

Mark Zagorski, CEO at DoubleVerify, said: “ViperBot is one of the most sophisticated fraud schemes that DV has ever identified. The dynamic nature of fraud schemes underscores the fact that advertisers need a partner who is laser focused on protecting their interests – and who operates independent of the media transaction to remain neutral when determining the quality of inventory.

“Efficient and transparent media buying leads to better outcomes for brands. By uncovering ViperBot, we are able to give brands greater confidence in their digital investment while ensuring campaign performance.”

Jack Smith, Chief Product Officer at DoubleVerify, said: “As fraudsters continue to evolve and aggressively target high-value inventory types, measurement providers need to catch up. We’re seeing this happen in CTV and mobile inventory, where higher CPMs make it a more attractive target, but this new redirection tactic can be applied across many environments.”

The company, alongside other ad verification companies Human and Oracle Moat, previously helped shut down other multimillion-dollar ad fraud schemes such as ParrotTerra, StreamScam and ICEBUCKET.

Both FOX and Discovery have said they will use Roku’s watermark solution to verify their inventory, and ad technology providers Google, HUMAN, Basic Technologies, Innovid and Magnite, have announced they will be integrating the technology after it is rolled out. Roku-owned OneView will be the first ad buying platform to offer inventory automatically validated by the solution.

Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management at Roku, said “As America’s No. 1 TV Streaming Platform, we are uniquely positioned to help the industry preempt device spoofing. This is powerful and free technology that will help advertisers accelerate their shift to TV streaming with even more confidence.”

Bill Murray, Vice President of Programmatic Solutions, Discovery, commented “Roku’s Advertising Watermark assures our advertiser clients that they are buying genuine Discovery inventory on Roku devices. We’re excited that Roku has brought its data, operating system, and ad technology together to easily prevent ad spoofing.”

Ad verification platform DoubleVerify analysed over a trillion CTV ad impressions across 80 markets between May 2020 and June 2021, and found significant adoption of spoofing scams over bot scams by fraudsters. Bot scams experienced a 44% drop, and over the period observed 36% of all CTV fraud was conducted through spoofing. DoubleVerify reports that, in Q4 2021, 18% of unprotected CTV ads traded programmatically were either invalid traffic or fraud.