Pixalate Week in Review: December 19 - 23, 2022

This week's review of ad fraud and privacy in the digital advertising space:

Pixalate in ProPublica: 'Porn, Piracy, Fraud: What Lurks Inside Google's Black Box Ad Empire'

This week, Pixalate was featured in ProPublica's comprehensive examination of Google's online advertising ecosystem and problems that have arisen from what ProPublica calls the "Black Box Ad Empire." Read the whole article on ProPublica and check out our blog about it here.

Pixalate’s vMVPD November 2022 Traffic Analysis Report: Top 25 vMVPD CTV Apps Account for 70%+ of Ad Spend on Roku Devices

Pixalate released its November 2022 vMVPD Traffic Analysis Report. In this report, we dive deep into vMVPD (Virtual MultiChannel Video Programming Distributor) apps - such as Sling TV and XUMO - to surface programmatic ad insights across Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices. Check out more findings in our full blog post.

Pixalate’s 2022 Summary of the Status of Key Federal and State Online Privacy Legislation

Several bills have been proposed in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures with the goal of strengthening children’s privacy online and protecting minors from invasive advertising and inappropriate content. As we close out the year, we examined two important federal bills and two key state laws and where they stand at the end of 2022. You can read our summary here.

Mobile App Manual Review under COPPA Rule: ‘Pegasus Flying Horse Simulator'

Pixalate continued its Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA series, containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness. This week we reviewed Pegasus Flying Horse Simulator in the Google Play store. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to each app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children). Read the full review here.

Mobile App Manual Review under COPPA Rule: ‘Clumsy Ninja'

This week we also reviewed Clumsy Ninja in both the Apple App and Google Play Stores. Read the full review here.

Pixalate Q2 2022 IVT Benchmarks: IVT 2x More Likely on Roku Apps Without App-Ads.txt

Pixalate published the Q2 2022 Invalid Traffic (IVT) Benchmarks report last month, describing IVT distribution in programmatic advertising impressions. It covered a wide variety of data points, so we decided we would break it down further and highlight some interesting findings.

This week we compared CTV apps with app-ads.txt and apps without app-ads.txt across the Roku and Amazon Fire TV stores. Roku apps appear to show a much bigger correlation to the use of app-ads.txt and lower IVT rates. Find out more in our blog post.