Discover how ad spend, supply chain dynamics, and invalid traffic (IVT) are shaping the United Kingdoms Connected TV (CTV) advertising ecosystem. Pixalate’s Q1 2025 CTV Ad Supply Chain Trends Report for the UK analyzes programmatic activity across Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Samsung Smart TV, offering insights into spend patterns, market share shifts, and traffic quality worldwide.
Pixalate’s data science team analyzed programmatic advertising activity across 115K+ Connected TV (CTV) apps and 8+ billion global open programmatic ad transactions in Q2 2025. The insights in this report are derived exclusively from Pixalate’s datasets, which primarily consist of buy-side open auction traffic sources.
Pixalate global open programmatic CTV ad spend figures were calculated by integrating externally sourced data with Pixalate’s internally tracked metrics. In the context of this report, third-party data is used to estimate the annual dollar value in 2025. Pixalate’s derived quarterly share is then applied to determine the dollar value for Q2 2025, and proprietary estimates are utilized to determine QoQ time series and regional trends in 2025.
Pixalate calculates ad market share, or Share of Voice (SOV), by measuring the proportion of programmatic ads served to a specific device, operating system, category, or other segment out of the total ads sold. For example, if Device X received 20 out of 100 total ads in one quarter, its market share would be 20% SOV. If the next quarter it received 36 out of 120 total ads, its share would rise to 30% SOV — a 50% increase. Importantly, these calculations exclude invalid traffic (IVT).
Pixalate defines “SSP Market Share” as the percentage of impressions associated with a given SSP out of all impressions within a country for a given platform. For example, if 100 total impressions were measured in Germany, and 10 of them were sold by Google Ad Exchange, then Google Ad Exchange would have a 10% market share.
Pixalate's SCO mapping technology identifies instances where multiple sellers should receive market share credit for the same impression (i.e., reselling). This can result in a country's total SSP market share exceeding 100%.
Connected TV (CTV) and Over-the-Top (OTT) TV refer to television content delivered via the internet rather than through traditional broadcast or cable. In this report, Pixalate uses the term CTV to classify activity based on the device used by the end-user. Examples include streaming devices (Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV), Smart TVs, and gaming consoles.
Learn more about OTT and CTV: Read the Pixalate Knowledgebase entry.
Per the Media Rating Council (MRC), “‘Invalid Traffic’ is defined generally as traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic (spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent traffic.”
Certain IVT is also sometimes referred to as “ad fraud.” Per the MRC, “'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes.
Pixalate is a global platform for privacy compliance, ad fraud prevention, and data intelligence in the digital ad supply chain. Founded in 2012, Pixalate’s platform is trusted by regulators, data researchers, advertisers, publishers, ad tech platforms, and financial analysts across the Connected TV (CTV), mobile app, and website ecosystems. Pixalate is MRC-accredited for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT).
Disclaimer: The content of this page reflects Pixalate’s opinions with respect to the factors that Pixalate believes can be useful to the digital media industry. Any proprietary data shared is grounded in Pixalate’s proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources should not be construed as endorsements. Pixalate’s opinions are just that - opinion, not facts or guarantees.
Per the MRC, “'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes. Also per the MRC, “‘Invalid Traffic’ is defined generally as traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic (spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent traffic.”
