NEW YORK—DoubleVerify and Roku, Inc. are reporting that they have seen a “marked reduction” in fraudulent ad requests imitating Roku device traffic across the streaming ecosystem since they started working together in 2023 to combat ad fraud.
According to DV’s recently released report, "Global Insights: Trends in the Modern Streaming Landscape", the ad industry continues to grapple with fraudsters targeting streaming environments that lack strong security measures.
The report also highlighted the staggering scale of the problem, with 4 million infected CTV bot devices generating extreme volumes of invalid traffic daily. This relentless wave of bot activity can lead to wasted budgets, with losses exceeding $7.5 million monthly from just one bot variant, based on industry CPM estimations. This rise of falsification schemes underscores the need for enhanced protection measures across the CTV advertising ecosystem.
To address those issues DV and Roku began working together to block billions of fraudulent ad requests imitating Roku device traffic across the streaming ecosystem. This marked reduction—standing in sharp contrast to broader industry trends—demonstrates, they said, the effectiveness of DV and Roku’s combined technologies, including Roku’s proprietary Advertising Watermark, which ensures inventory authenticity and curbs invalid traffic (IVT) at scale.
“CTV remains one of the fastest-growing channels in digital advertising and, unfortunately, one of the most targeted by fraudsters due to high CPMs and the relative newness of the ecosystem,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “Our work with Roku shows how proactive, collaborative innovation can deliver real, measurable results for advertisers. And this is just the beginning—by the end of 2025, DV will be rolling out new advancements designed to bring even greater trust and performance to CTV.”
The two companies reported that one of the more effective ways to block fake CTV ad impressions that falsely claim to be generated by Roku devices has been Roku’s Advertising Watermark. Roku’s Advertising Watermark is designed to ensure that only genuine Roku devices can display authenticated ads, providing an additional layer of protection against device spoofing and other falsification schemes.
“Our Advertising Watermark technology is instrumental in combating device and app spoofing,” said James Kelm, vice president of product, advertising and media, Roku. “Our partnership with DV enhances our collective capabilities to secure the TV streaming advertising ecosystem. Together, we are committed to ensuring transparency, accountability, and confidence for advertisers and partners.”
DV’s Fraud Lab leverages Roku’s proprietary Advertising Watermark technology and DV’s cutting-edge technology to mitigate ad fraud and support Roku’s efforts.
In addition they have also worked together to combat such major ad fraud schemes as:
- Starting in 2022, they collaborated to shut down SmokeScreen, a sophisticated CTV ad fraud operation that used screensaver apps to generate fake ad impressions in the background. For a year, DV and Roku investigated the group of apps involved and used signals from Roku’s Advertising Watermark to reveal key technical details about how the scheme operated.
- From 2023 to 2024, DV also uncovered and mitigated CycloneBot, one of the largest CTV ad fraud schemes ever detected, which generated up to 250 million fake ad requests daily and employed advanced evasion techniques. DV’s early collaboration with Roku and its Fraud Lab played a critical role in dismantling CycloneBot, leveraging insights and signals from Roku’s Advertising Watermark.
- DV and Roku’s partnership also extends beyond fraud protection, with measurement capabilities on Roku’s home screen and native formats — allowing an effective way for advertisers to reach their audience on the largest screen within the household.
