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

      Publisher & Seller Trust Index Rankings

      Learn about our Publisher Trust Index (PTI) & Seller Trust Index (STI) rankings.

      Publisher Rankings

      To learn more about our Publisher Trust Index, please visit this page. The methodology for our PTI is also available. 

      The Publisher Trust Index ranks Connected TV apps, mobile apps, and websites. 

      The Publisher Rankings section also includes Top Grossing and Reach rankings. 

      For the Publisher Reach rankings, the "Connected TV" and "Mobile Apps" pages represent the apps and their estimated reach for a particular month and ranked in a descending order. These can be filtered by region, country, and category.

      Estimated reach or estimated market reach at the publisher-level is the output of models that generate monthly active user (MAU) predictions given various data points such as mappable third-party inventory across various platforms, impression-level data, and various other composite metrics that are generated after removing any potential sampling biases in order to provide robust estimates.

      As with our Seller Trust Index, first-party data from these publishers is not leveraged so as not to introduce sampling biases and gamification opportunities.

      SSP Rankings

      Pixalate Seller Trust Indexes (STI) rank the relative quality of programmatic advertising sellers based on Pixalate’s proprietary technology that analyzes more than 100 billion impressions monthly. These indexes provide discrete insights across various regions (US/International/Global), environments (e.g., mobile web/desktop, mobile in-app, etc.), and inventory types (e.g., display, video, etc.). Refer to the Seller Trust Indexes: Criteria & Definitions below for discrete details and definitions across the various reporting criterion utilized in Pixalate Seller Trust Indexes presented below.

      Global Seller Trust Index (GSTI)

      The GSTI focuses on web traffic. The GSTI ratings are based on an analysis of reach, ads.txt, MFA Risk, invalid traffic by type (GIVT and SIVT), and ad viewability. The GSTI covers mobile and desktop web inventory.

      • GSTI reports are available per quarter and by region (Global, North America, LATAM, APAC and EMEA)
        Note: Prior to Q4 2023, the GSTI reports were available for US and Non U.S regions.
      • Refer to the Seller Trust Indexes: Criteria & Definitions section for discrete details regarding the GSTI reporting criterion presented above.

      Mobile Seller Trust Index (MSTI)

      The MSTI ratings are based on an analysis of reach, invalid traffic by type, location, and transparency. The MSTI represents mobile in-app inventory.

      • MSTI reports reflected across the Global region and accessible by Month.
      • Refer to the Seller Trust Indexes: Criteria & Definitions section for discrete details regarding the MSTI reporting criterion presented above.

      CTV Seller Trust Index (CSTI)

      The CSTI ratings are based on an analysis of IVT score, household score, channel share score, SSAI score, and spoofing score.


      • Refer to the Seller Trust Indexes: Criteria & Definitions page for discrete details regarding the CSTI reporting criterion presented above.

      Seller Trust Indexes - Criteria and Definitions

      Global Seller Trust Index (GSTI)

      The GSTI focuses on web traffic. GSTI ratings are based on an analysis of reach, ads.txt, MFA Risk, invalid traffic by type (GIVT and SIVT), and ad viewability. The GSTI represents mobile and desktop web inventory.

      • REACH SCORE: Based on the percentage of total internet users available on the seller’s platform.
      • SOPHISTICATED INVALID TRAFFIC SCORE (SIVT) SCORE: Based on the amount of ad impressions determined to be SIVT, as defined by the MRC guidelines, such as hijacked devices, URL spoofing, or falsely represented impressions. SIVT is generally more probabilistic in nature.
      • GENERAL INVALID TRAFFIC SCORE (GIVT) SCORE: Based on the amount of ad impressions determined to be GIVT, as defined by the Media Rating Council (MRC) guidelines, such as data-center traffic, bots, and spiders or other crawlers masquerading as legitimate users. GIVT is generally more deterministic in nature.
      • ADS.TXT SCORE: Based on domain quality represented by sellers on open exchanges. For example, a seller with high-quality domains with high-reach, who is rated among the top sellers for those domains, will get a high score.
      • VIEWABILITY SCORE: Based on the amount of ad impressions classified as viewable, per the MRC-defined standard.
      • MFA RISK SCORE: Based on the amount of programmatic inventory from sites that were deemed as high or medium risk of being "Made For Advertising" (MFA) by Pixalate's MFA detection methodology. This score for sellers is marked as Low, Medium, High or Critical.

      ** Note - prior to Q4 2023, the MFA Risk Score was not part of the GSTI criteria. Instead, the GSTI included a "Masking Score" which was based on the amount of programmatic inventory misrepresented as a different domain.

      Mobile Seller Trust Index (MSTI)

      The MSTI ratings are based on an analysis of reach, invalid traffic by type, location, and transparency. The MSTI represents mobile in-app inventory.

      • REACH SCORE: Based on the percentage of total internet users available on the seller’s platform.
      • SOPHISTICATED INVALID TRAFFIC SCORE (SIVT): As defined by the MRC guidelines, such as hijacked devices, URL spoofing, or falsely represented impressions. SIVT is generally more probabilistic in nature.
      • GENERAL INVALID TRAFFIC SCORE (GIVT): As defined by the Media Rating Council (MRC) guidelines, such as data-center traffic, bots, and spiders or other crawlers masquerading as legitimate users. GIVT is generally more deterministic in nature.
      • TRANSPARENCY SCORE: Availability of device and user information. For example, a seller with a high device identification percentage will score high on this scale.
        • Sellers who provide valid Device ID information to buyers will score higher than those who offer obfuscated or missing Device IDs
        • Domain Masking is specific to Desktop/Mobile Web only and is not related to the MSTI Transparency score. The Transparency score is specific to Device IDs. 
      • LOCATION SCORE: Availability and precision of location data. A seller with accurate location information will score high on this scale.

      ConnectedTV Seller Trust Index (CSTI)

      • INVALID TRAFFIC SCORE (IVT): Based on the proportion of each seller’s IVT-free inventory
      • HOUSEHOLD REACH SCORE: Based on the percentage of households and OTT/CTV devices within each household, reachable on the seller’s platform.
      • CHANNEL SHARE SCORE: Based on each seller’s access to inventory and popular apps.
      • SSAI INTEGRITY SCORE: Based on each seller’s transparent, IVT-free Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) inventory. In this context, ‘transparency’ is defined as the process where an SSAI vendor passes additional HTTP headers as per the VAST 4.1+ standards (e.g. X-Device-User-Agent, or other X-Device-* headers) in order to provide the measurement vendors with more transparency in regards to the end-user being served.
      • SPOOFING SCORE: Based on each seller’s inventory that originates from the declared apps and is not spoofed by another app or via third-party infrastructure(s) (e.g., data-center, etc.).
      • SIDE-LOADED APP SCORE (Amazon FireTV only): Based on each seller’s traffic or apps that appear not to be available or accessible via the platform’s main store. As Amazon Fire devices are Android based, it is not uncommon for users to “side-load” apps via APK, and ads can be present within those apps. A seller with limited traffic coming from side-loaded apps will score well on this scale.