Pixalate Week in Review: March 16 - 20, 2020

This week's review of ad fraud and quality in the digital advertising space.

1: Over 182k apps now have app-ads.txt

According to Pixalate's data, over 182,000 apps had app-ads.txt files at the end of 2019, up from 3,308 at the end of Q1 2019 (when the initiative first launched).

Here are the total number of apps with app-ads.txt files – on iOS and Android combined — as of the last day of each quarter:

• Q1 2019: 3,308 apps
• Q2 2019: 9,154 apps
• Q3 2019: 111,875 apps
• Q4 2019: 182,832 apps

2. Juniper Research names Pixalate 2020 Gold winner for 'Best Antifraud Solution in Advertising'

Pixalate has been named a winner in Juniper Research's 2020 Future Digital Awards. Pixalate has earned the Gold award for Best Anti-Fraud Solution in Advertising. Read more in Yahoo.

3. Digiday: Coronavirus leads to 'Overzealous block lists'

"Coronavirus is shining a light on a long-running problem with overzealous block lists," wrote Digiday in a piece examining the impact on digital advertising. "[E]ntire news-site homepages are also inadvertently being blocked" by adding COVID-19-related terms to keyword blocklists.

4. eMarketer podcast: How COVID-19 might impact ad spending

In this eMarketer podcast, "senior analyst Jasmine Enberg, forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom and principal analyst Nicole Perrin discuss how COVID-19 could affect ad spending."

5. Navigating new mediums — and avoiding ad fraud

"As new digital channels continue to emerge, such as over-the-top (OTT) and mobile in-app, along with higher demand and lower supply, brands need to become less 'Mad Men' and more 'Math Men,'" reads an AdAge op-ed. "They need to lean into analytics and data science insights for attribution support and return-on-investment insights ... [including] a laser focus on reducing ad fraud."