Another even larger advertising fraud scheme has been detected in the fast-growing but apparently vulnerable connected TV space.
Dubbed ParrotTerra, the scam has managed to divert ad dollars by spoofing 3.7 million devices and 2.7 million IP addresses per day.
DoubleVerify, a fraud monitoring service, estimates that ParrotTerra was on track to steal $30 million to $50 million.
ParrotTerra is much bigger than the previous CTV ad fraud scheme at three times the size of StreamScam, which had been detected two months ago.
DoubleVerify said that ParrotTerra is what’s known as a service-side ad insertion scheme, like its predecessors StreamScam and LeoTerra.
The new scheme shows that fraudsters are evolving and finding new ways to try to operate undetected.
Traditionally, SSAI schemes have generated impressions at a relatively slow and steady pace. “ParrotTerra, however, began by testing its manipulation on a smaller scale before rapidly progressing into high volumes," DoubeVerify said in a bulletin to clients. “This is likely an attempt by the fraudsters to try and identify a path that DV would not detect, before they start to scale their operation.”
DoubleVerify concludes that the fraudsters are now looking to cash in quickly before they’re detected.
