Today (19 October), Integral Ad Science, a global leader in digital media quality, released its Media Quality Report (MQR) for H1 2021, providing transparency into the performance and quality of APAC digital media, alongside global comparisons. The latest MQR highlights brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability trends across display, video, mobile web, and in-app advertising. 

Key highlights from the report:

APAC markets among top brand-safe markets for desktop display

India, New Zealand, and Vietnam were among the top brand-safe markets in the world for desktop display, causing global brand risk to drop by 1.8 percentage points (pp) year-over-year to 2.4% in H1 2021. India reported a decline in desktop display brand risk at 0.8% — a reduction of 1.4 pp, New Zealand reported 1.3% brand risk, and Singapore reported 1.4% brand risk. Indonesia brand risk, though on the higher side, showed improved brand safety levels at 4.7%.

Singapore reported the world’s highest fraud rates on desktop display

Singapore (+0.9 pp) posted the largest ad fraud increases on desktop display, pushing its respective optimised-against-ad-fraud levels to 3%, the highest worldwide. Brand risk across display declined in Singapore with desktop at 1.4% and mobile web at 1.6%. Viewability on display environments in Singapore saw a decline, with desktop display reducing  7.3 pp in H1 2021 to report 62.5% and mobile web display at 56.9%. However, on mobile app display, viewability surged 8.7 pp to 74.9%, making it one of the most viable environments in Singapore.

Programmatic inventory in Indonesia registered lower brand risk overall than publisher direct inventory

For mobile web display, publisher direct inventory showed a brand risk level of 5.6% compared to 3.9% observed via programmatic inventory. Indonesia is a mobile-first market, with 96.4% of the country’s 202.6 million internet population using the device to access the web, and mobile ads are deeply embedded in most marketing strategies. Mobile web display inventory in Indonesia registered the highest brand risk globally at 4.5% in H1 2021, while the worldwide average stood at 2.6%. Meanwhile, for mobile web display, Indonesia also saw one of the biggest reductions in brand risk (4.8 pp) in H1 2021 compared to H1 2020.

Laura Quigley, SVP APAC at IAS said, “Indonesia’s programmatic buys have seen higher media quality performance than publisher direct inventory, generating far lower risk and fraud rates for advertisers through optimisation strategies such as pre-bid targeting. Therefore spending on programmatic will become even more essential. As the technology evolves, programmatic will not only facilitate investment into quality impressions but also drive value beyond verification with privacy-compliant, contextual avoidance and targeting combined with enriched channel-level insights. To reduce brand risk from their inventory, Singapore and regional advertisers are strongly encouraged to closely monitor and optimise against fraud by utilising pre-bid tools to target away from unsuitable environments that don’t meet their brand values.”

Viewability on mobile environments increased in India

Mobile campaigns in India had more viewable impressions in H1 2021. Viewability on mobile web display increased by 1 pp annually to 58.9% in H1 2021, while viewability on mobile in-app display increased from 51.3% to 54.1%. Global display viewability was down 2.4 pp on desktop and 3.3 pp on mobile web year-on-year, reaching 69.5% and 64.3%, respectively. The worldwide reductions were driven by drops across Asia-Pacific, with India registering a 7.2 pp drop to post 54.9% viewability in desktop environments. In India, desktop and mobile display environments showed significantly higher viewability rates in programmatically traded inventory than publisher direct inventory.

Australia registered the highest desktop video ad completion rates

On average, 91.4% of viewable desktop video ads worldwide were watched through the first quartile (the first 25% of the video ad) in H1 2021, with 78.3% of these impressions remaining viewable through completion. Australia registered the highest desktop video ad completion rates, as well as the lowest drop-off (-10 pp) of any market worldwide. By contrast, the U.S. registered the lowest video ad completion rate of 90.1% for the first quartile, with a 13.6 pp drop-off to average 76.5% full ad completions during the same period.

Although on the decline, Japan has one of the highest ad fraud rates in the world

Optimised-against-ad-fraud levels in Japan decreased by 0.2 pp for desktop display to report 2.6% in H1 2021, which was the second-highest ad fraud rate globally. The worldwide fraud rates on desktop display were 1%. Global ad fraud on mobile web display dropped from 0.5% to 0.4% between H1 2020 and H1 2021. Japan remained the market with the highest ad fraud rates in mobile web environments, with display reaching 2.3% and video reaching 2.9%.