Mumbai: DoubleVerify, a software platform for media quality verification and performance optimization, and Roku, Inc. (“Roku”) (NASDAQ: ROKU), today announced new milestones from their two-year collaboration to protect connected TV (CTV) advertising from fraud. The partnership continues to deliver significant results in combating falsified ad impressions and ensuring greater transparency across the streaming ecosystem.
According to DV’s latest report, Global Insights: Trends in the Modern Streaming Landscape, the digital advertising industry continues to face increasing threats from fraudulent actors targeting CTV environments. The report reveals that over 4 million infected CTV bot devices generate massive volumes of invalid traffic daily, resulting in estimated financial losses exceeding $7.5 million per month from just a single bot variant.
Against this backdrop, the collaboration between DV and Roku has led to the blocking of billions of fraudulent ad requests mimicking Roku device traffic since 2023. This marked reduction stands out in contrast to broader industry trends, underscoring the effectiveness of Roku’s Advertising Watermark technology and DV’s advanced fraud prevention systems in verifying inventory authenticity and curbing invalid traffic (IVT) at scale.
“CTV remains one of the fastest-growing channels in digital advertising and, unfortunately, one of the most targeted by fraudsters due to high CPMs and the relative newness of the ecosystem,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “Our work with Roku shows how proactive, collaborative innovation can deliver real, measurable results for advertisers. And this is just the beginning—by the end of 2025, DV will be rolling out new advancements designed to bring even greater trust and performance to CTV.”
Roku’s Advertising Watermark serves as a critical safeguard, ensuring that only authentic Roku devices can display verified ads—effectively reducing device and app spoofing.
“Our Advertising Watermark technology is instrumental in combating device and app spoofing,” said James Kelm, VP of Product, Advertising and Media, Roku. “Our partnership with DV enhances our collective capabilities to secure the TV streaming advertising ecosystem. Together, we are committed to ensuring transparency, accountability, and confidence for advertisers and partners.”
The collaboration between Roku and DoubleVerify has a strong history of tackling major CTV ad fraud operations:
- In 2022, the two companies worked together to dismantle SmokeScreen, a sophisticated scheme that used screensaver apps to generate fake ad impressions.
- From 2023 to 2024, they uncovered and mitigated CycloneBot, one of the largest CTV ad fraud schemes ever identified, which generated up to 250 million fake ad requests daily.
Both investigations leveraged Roku’s Advertising Watermark and DV’s Fraud Lab to detect and neutralize these fraudulent activities.
Beyond fraud prevention, the partnership has also expanded to include measurement capabilities across Roku’s home screen and native formats—helping advertisers effectively reach audiences on the biggest screen in the home.
The continued collaboration between DoubleVerify and Roku reflects their shared mission to strengthen the integrity, transparency, and performance of the global CTV advertising ecosystem.
