Methodology
      Back to home
      1. Help Center
      2. Media Ratings Terminal
      3. Methodology

      Publisher Trust Index (PTI)

      Learn about our Publisher Trust Index (PTI) rankings.

      Publisher Rankings

      The Publisher Trust Index (PTI) ranks Connected TV apps, mobile apps, and websites, and provides Pixalate’s perspective of the quality of the publishers that support programmatic advertising. The PTIs can be found here - https://ratings.pixalate.com/rankings

      The  PTIs are published monthly, highlighting the top websites, CTV and mobile apps, based on Pixalate’s proprietary technology and methodology. The rankings can be segmented by category, global regions (APAC, EMEA, LATAM, and North America), and countries.

       

      Methodology

      Pixalate uses aggregated 3rd party data to develop the Publisher Trust Index, not a publisher’s  first party data, to deliver an unbiased ranking of the reported measures.

      NOTE : The websites/apps listed in each region/country are based on the open programmatic advertising traffic observed by Pixalate from that geographic area, regardless of the country of registration for the website/app.

      Web PTI:

      The following factors are considered for each website’s final score:

      • POPULARITY SCORE: This score corresponds to a composite measure of the popularity of the websites and the programmatic inventory seen by Pixalate from the website. It is a number between 0 to 99 indicating how extensive user coverage, popularity and inventory the website has compared to its competitors
      • INVALID TRAFFIC (IVT) SCORE: This score is based on the percentage of ad impressions determined to be IVT for a website compared to other websites in the same category and geography. This includes both Sophisticated IVT (SIVT) and General IVT (GIVT).
      • ADS.TXT SCORE: This score corresponds to the detected presence of ads.txt for a given publisher, as well as the presence of a good mix of sellers and resellers compared to its competitors. For this, Pixalate has developed a methodology for building a scoring curve for ads.txt that assigns a score for each combination of total sellers and resellers for a given publisher. The main rationale is that too many resellers may increase the risk for IVT.
      • BRAND SAFETY SCORE: This score is based on the brand safety risk levels associated with the content on the website. This brand safety risk is determined by keywords in the content that are associated with various brand unsafe categories. 
      • VIEWABILITY SCORE: This is based on the amount of ad impressions classified as viewable, per the MRC-defined definitions.
      • MFA RISK SCORE: evaluates the “Made for Advertising” characteristics of the website. These are ad-enabled websites  that are intentionally designed to generate arbitraged traffic, prioritizing advertising over value to users. This score corresponds to the MFA risk rating designation for the site, based on Pixalate’s MFA Risk methodology.
      • AD DENSITY SCORE: Corresponds to the number of ad placements found on the website per minute per user. This is measured across all the pages on a website
      • Final Score: Corresponds to the weighted average of all the individual scores mentioned above. 

      Mobile PTI

      The following factors are considered for each apps’s final score:

      • Popularity Score: This score corresponds to a composite measure of programmatic popularity that is calculated in terms of both reach and inventory availability. It is a number between 0 to 99 indicating how extensive user coverage and inventory an app has compared to its competitors
      • IVT Score: This score corresponds to the percentage of IVT of the publisher compared to other publishers in a given category and GEO (i.e., other publishers in the same category).
      • ads.txt Score: This score corresponds to the detected presence of ads.txt for a given publisher, as well as the presence of a “balanced” mix of sellers and resellers compared to its competitors.
      • Brand Safety Score: This score captures brand unsafe keywords or brand unsafe advisories declared by a given app in their app store page.
      • Permissions Score: This score corresponds to the increase in the likelihood of the presence of IVT when specific permissions are given to a given app that are not common for its category. Permissions that can be risky for a given category might be necessary for the operation of the app in another category, and this kind of information is taken into consideration in order to derive this score. Note: this score is currently only available for Android.
      • Viewability Score: This score corresponds to the performance of the app in terms of its viewability.
      • Rank: This corresponds to the rank order of the publisher compared to its competitors within a given app store, category, and region combination.
      • Final Score: This score corresponds to the average of all the individual scores mentioned above.

      CTV PTI

      The following factors are considered for each apps’s final score:

      • Popularity Score: This score corresponds to a composite measure of programmatic popularity that is calculated in terms of both reach and inventory availability. It is a number between 0 to 99 indicating how extensive user coverage and inventory an app has compared to its competitors. Apps with more extensive user coverage compared to competitors will achieve a higher score in this category.
      • IVT Score: This score corresponds to the percentage of IVT of the publisher compared to other publishers in a given category and GEO. Apps with less IVT will achieve a higher score in this category.
      • Ad Density Score: This score characterizes the number of ads (i.e., ad density) per 10-minute video time. This can be seen as a tradeoff between maximization of revenue on the advertising ecosystem side while minimizing the user disturbance. Pixalate has developed a method for assigning scores to various ad density values.
      • Engagement Score: This score captures the user engagement with a given app in terms of time spent consuming content. Apps that have a higher average watch time will have a higher score in this category
      • Rank: This corresponds to the rank order of the publisher compared to its competitors within a given app store, category, and region combination.
      • Final Score: This score corresponds to the average of all the individual scores mentioned above.