Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS), a global leader in digital media quality, released the sixteenth edition of the Media Quality Report, providing transparency into the performance and quality of APAC digital media, alongside global comparisons

Key insights from the report include:

Desktop display ad fraud rates reached the highest level worldwide in Singapore

Global ad fraud rates rose across all formats and environments in H2 2021. Desktop display ad fraud rates were highest in Singapore at 4.1%. The second highest fraud rate was posted by Vietnam (2.6%) with Japan also at 2.6%, and Indonesia at 0.7%. India was the only market in the region that saw ad fraud rates reduce on desktop display to 1.1%. While the worldwide optimised-against-ad-fraud was 1.4%, the non-optimised ad fraud rates could be as high as 10.7%.

Programmatic buys across all display channels in India, Indonesia, and Vietnam had lower ad fraud rates than publisher direct buys. The application of pre-bid solutions offers additional protection against ad fraud when transacting ads programmatically.

Brand risk is reduced to historic low levels across all environments aided by context-based strategies

Brand risk rates dipped to historically low levels in H2 2021. This shift was powered by the growing adoption of sophisticated contextual solutions, increasing privacy regulations, and the positive impact contextual alignment brings to the consumer advertising experience.

India, New Zealand, and Australia experienced the lowest risk levels for display ads, each boasting annual reductions of 1.5 percentage points (pp) or more.

Emerging digital advertising markets posted the more robust viewability performance

Some of the most robust increases in display viewability came from emerging digital advertising markets, suggesting a continued reliance on display advertising as locally produced premium video content remains limited. India and Indonesia saw mobile app display viewability rise by 9.5 and 7.3 pp, respectively. In APAC, Australia led the desktop display viewability levels (72.4%), followed by New Zealand (66.6%), Indonesia (65.8%), Singapore (65.0%), Vietnam (64.7%) with India (59.5%), and Japan (53.5%) registering the lowest viewability levels globally.

Laura Quigley, SVP APAC at IAS, said "It's heartening to see improved digital media quality performance from emerging markets in the APAC region. Publishers are reviewing the inventory and re-designing their sites to deliver greater attention and viewability for clients and implementing a strategy to target away from risk and reduce fraud. This is leading to an increase in quality inventory. On the buy-side, advertisers must have robust pre-bid and post-bid strategies and deploy verification solutions to make sure that direct and programmatically traded impressions are protected and optimised to provide maximum impact and ROI".