DoubleVerify (DV) has released its 2024 Global Insights Report along with four regional reports. These reports cover quality and performance trends in the various digital media markets including AI, attention measurement, merging media, made for advertising (MFA) sites and sustainability. In addition, it looks at local quality trends such as brand safety and suitability, fraud and viewability.

One notable point in the report is that North American media buyers say attention is the most important third-party verification tool across all media channels with 49% saying attention measurement has a positive impact on media quality. Surprisingly, video ads in North America receive the lowest attention among all regions. This finding, according to DV, is driven by impressions served as small video players that account for the majority of authentic viewable impressions in North America.

DV’s Attention Index by device, which measures exposure and engagement, shows that in-app ads get the most attention with 118 for display ads and 165 for video ads compared to a baseline of 100.  Attention for mobile web ads follows at 87 and 78 and desktop ads at 77 and 74.

Fraud and non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) has stabilized in the U.S. with only a slight 2% increase in North America. That said, in Canada fraud has decreased by 25% putting it below the global benchmark. North America is the only region where desktop devices drive the majority of fraud violations due to the high prevalence of bot fraud on desktop device in the U.S.

The media effectiveness software platform also analyzed more than one trillion impressions from over 2,000 brands in 100 markets to discover content and coverage patterns across MFA sites and has found some key trends. These sites tend to offer content related to evergreen topics such as travel, fitness, parenting, family and health but avoid time-sensitive topics such as news or sports. The majority of MFA sites (99%) are more likely to cover travel while family and parenting (57%) and health and fitness (47%) are less likely to be MFA.

In June 2023 when concerns about new Gen AI tools producing inappropriate content, the ANA reported that MFA sites comprised 21% of all programmatic ad impressions and attracted 15% of total advertising spend. Last month, DV found a 19% increase in MFA impression volume.

According to DV, MFA sites have a high ratio of ads to actual content on the page, with ads frequently refreshing to maximize profit from a single visit. They also rely heavily on paid traffic sources such as social and native ads with almost no traffic coming from organic sources. MFA content is designed to keep users scrolling or clicking within the same site and are often duplicated verbatim across websites.