After a stagnant second quarter, Canadian programmatic and RTB inventory growth rebounded in Q3, helping Canada to bump France as the world’s fifth-largest programmatic market.
According to Media Experts‘ latest quarterly report on programmatic inventory, Canadian impression volumes across all categories rose 11% on the exchanges in Q3. As of Q2, Canada’s growth had flattened out and fallen behind the global average; but the latest numbers put Canadian inventory up 39% year-over-year, ahead of annual global growth, and above growth in the U.S., U.K. and Germany — three of the four RTB markets ahead of Canada in the global ranking.
Media Experts says Q3 growth was driven by seasonal demand from retail advertisers gearing up for back-to-school season. Market volume spiked dramatically in July as publishers attempted to sell off inventory left over from the weak midsummer retail period, before retrenching in August as publishers reserved more inventory for direct sales.
The number of bids per impression rose in August as well, more evidence that publishers were seeing higher demand for premium inventory and were motivated to reserve those impressions for more lucrative direct sales.
The trend in exchange CPMs was also reversed from Q2, with average inventory prices down 6% quarter-over-quarter and 20% year-over-year due primarily to growth in supply. Inventory transparency fell in Q3, with publishers reporting above- or below-the-fold placement for only 31% of impressions, compared to 42% in Q2.
The report also says mobile inventory kept up healthy growth from last quarter, growing 15% in Q3. Tablets outperformed smartphones 65% to 35%, driven by tablets’ compatibility with standardized ad formats and higher reported conversion rates. iOS devices consolidated gains on Android, increasing 12% in market share since last quarter; Android remains the dominant platform for mobile programmatic sales, with a slim 51% market share, down from 70% at the beginning of 2013.
Data was collected from 260,000 sites hosting display, video, mobile and social inventory that Media Experts’ XPETO trading desk accesses through global exchanges and networks. The data was compiled and analyzed by Accordant Media and Casale Media.
Spotlight on ad fraud
As part of the report, Media Experts and Accordant Media teamed up with advertising security firm White Ops to investigate the effects of impression fraud on digital media buying in Canada. The researchers ran a two-week test campaign, executing random buys across 200 types of suppliers including exchanges, networks and direct sales from single publishers. Without applying any fraud protection or verification services, they found that 10.3% of the inventory they bought showed suspicious activity. By applying White Ops’ sophisticated fraud-detection filters, which look at user agents, mouse movement, engagement, browser refresh rates, and other indicators, they were able to cut the amount of suspicious inventory purchased down to 1.8%.
The researchers found that large publishers had the lowest rate of fraud, with the largest 25% of publishers having only 0.2% suspicious activity. The highest concentration of fraud was found in the second-to-smallest group of publishers, which had 5.9% suspicious activity; surprisingly, the smallest 25% of publishers, with their much-discussed longtail sites, had a slightly lower rate of fraud at 4.8%.
To avoid fraud, Media Experts recommends buyers use white- and black-lists, avoid buying at times when the target audience isn’t engaged (like 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. for most brands), and stick to buying platforms and inventory that have been audited. For more on fraud and brand safety in digital advertising, see the latest print issue of Marketing Magazine.
