The fraud rate for automotive marketers buying connected TV (CTV) is 52% higher than for non-automotive advertisers, according to digital media measurement and analytics company DoubleVerify.

“CTV is fraudsters’ favorite environment due to high CPMs, low transparency, and fewer industry protections,” says John Ross, director, product strategy at DoubleVerify. “Advertisers have focused on direct publisher relationships in CTV to help combat these issues, but, unfortunately, fraud issues persist across digital – even in direct I/O campaigns.”

Automotive marketing issues also arise in terms of overall media placement volume. In 2021, for example, 33% of DoubleVerify-measured automotive brand video ads were served to a CTV device. For non-automotive advertisers the rate was 25%.

Automotive advertisers in 2022 are expected to spend over $17 billion on digital advertising in the U.S.

And there are other issues — such as viewability.

DoubleVerify says auto advertisers’ video viewable rates – the percentage of time in which an ad appeared and was viewable — was 9% lower compared to non-auto advertisers. Also automotive video completion rate – the percentage of video ads that play from start to finish — was 4% lower than non-auto advertisers.

Says Collette Spagnolo, vice president of marketing analytics at DoubleVerify: “Just because they’re investing more in digital video advertising, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always getting the best performance.”

The good news, according to DoubleVerify, is that auto-focused digital sites can provide greater quality for advertisers. However, viewability challenges remain.