Top 5 Ad Verification Techniques for 2025

Digital ad fraud is projected to reach $172 billion globally by 2028, nearly doubling from 2023.¹ As advertising channels become increasingly digital and automated, the exposure to fraudulent activity intensifies.

In many cases, advertising budgets are diverted to non-human traffic due to insufficient fraud detection measures.

Explore the top 5 ad verification standards and methodologies to ensure digital advertising spend reaches its intended audience.

What is ad verification?

Ad verification checks whether digital ads are shown to the intended audience, placed in the correct ad slot, and displayed in suitable environments. It ensures each ad impression aligns with the campaign parameters, such as location, device type, and content category. Verification confirms that ads appear to real users rather than bots.

Ad verification protects advertisers’ money and supports brand safety by identifying invalid traffic, bot traffic, and fraudulent ads. Without it, ads may be hidden, stacked behind other elements, or placed next to inappropriate or harmful content, harming brand reputation and wasting ad spending.

Why ad verification matters

Traffic quality

Detects fake impressions, blocks fake users, and filters bot traffic. This prevents misleading data caused by fraudulent activity and ensures digital ads reach actual users.

Viewability

Measures whether users had the chance to see the ad by using ad pixels, ad tags, or verification tags within the ad markup. If the ad is not viewable, the impression has no value.

Brand safety and suitability

Verifies that ads are not placed next to content that could damage a brand. Ad verification helps prevent inappropriate ad placement and ensures the brand appears only with relevant content.

Audience targeting

Confirms that ads reached the target audience defined in the ad campaign settings. Incorrect targeting distorts results and reduces the impact of digital advertising campaigns.

How ad verification works

Platforms often perform verification, but advertisers and agencies rely on vendors or independent ad verification companies. Some tools offer a neutral check against metrics reported by publishers.

These ad verification systems evaluate traffic source, viewability, placement context, and audience match. This supports better control over ad placements across ad networks, ad exchanges, and mobile apps, and reduces exposure to fraudulent practices.

Real-life examples

DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify offers ad verification solutions for brands and agencies to ensure that real users see ads in brand-safe environments and within the intended geography. Their proprietary DV Authentic Ad metric measures ad quality across platforms and formats.

Key offerings include fraud detection, viewability verification, brand safety controls, and performance analytics. Tools like DV Authentic Attention and DV Pinnacle provide real-time insights to optimize digital advertising. Their coverage spans social media, programmatic, CTV, and retail media, helping advertisers protect investments and improve campaign outcomes.²

Integral Ad Science (IAS)

Integral Ad Science (IAS) helps advertisers protect their media budgets by blocking bots and ensuring ads are served only to real users on legitimate publishers.

With global digital ad spending nearing $870 billion by 2027, IAS uses large-scale data analysis to detect fraudulent activity across CTV, mobile apps, open web, and social platforms. Their technology analyzes browser sessions and device signals to accurately identify non-human behavior, preventing wasted ad spend before impressions are delivered.

IAS reports 91% higher bot detection than a leading competitor and highlights a 12-fold increase in fraud when mitigation tools are absent.³

GeoEdge

GeoEdge provides security-focused ad quality solutions that prevent malicious and low-quality ads from disrupting the user experience across web, CTV, and in-app environments.

Their tools block malvertising embedded in creatives or landing pages, allow customizable ad filtering rules, and offer complete transparency into programmatic creatives.

Assembly Digital, a fast-growing Canadian media group, partnered with GeoEdge to maintain strict ad quality standards across its publications, especially following its acquisition by St. Joseph Communications.

The team needed a solution beyond broad filtering to block off-brand, misleading, or offensive ads with precision. GeoEdge’s tools, including AdWatch, keyword search, and brand filtering, allowed Assembly to gain complete visibility into programmatic creatives and enforce detailed ad quality policies.

As a result, ad compliance became more efficient, shifting from daily to weekly management, while improving user experience and enhancing ad performance metrics like return visits and click-through rates.⁴

How is ad verification useful for businesses?

Transparent performance metrics

In digital advertising campaigns, the number of impressions or clicks doesn’t always reflect genuine engagement.

For example, an ad may technically generate 10,000 impressions. Still, if 4,000 of those are caused by ad stacking, ad hijacking, or ads displayed below the fold (where internet users never see them), then the campaign’s actual value is much lower.

Ad verification tools measure viewability and authenticity, helping advertisers ensure that their advertising dollars reach actual people.

Media savings and budget optimization

Ad verification services prevent advertisers’ money from being wasted on fraudulent ads and irrelevant impressions. Advertisers often pay ad networks or exchanges based on cost per mille (CPM) or per click (CPC). However, without monitoring, they may pay for ad impressions served to fake users or multiple ads loaded in a single ad slot through ad stacking.

Ad verification solutions allow advertisers to reject traffic from low-quality sources, renegotiate pricing with ad vendors, and avoid malicious ads or inappropriate ad placement. This improves ad spending efficiency and ensures the budget supports digital advertising that drives real impact.

Protecting brand reputation

One of the most significant risks in online advertising is that ads may appear next to inappropriate or harmful content, like violent, offensive, or fake news pages.

This can damage how consumers perceive the brand. Ad verification technology helps ensure brand safety by monitoring where ads are displayed and whether those ad placements align with brand suitability.

Ad verification companies scan websites, mobile apps, and video ads to avoid fraudulent practices and confirm that ads appear on pages the brand endorses.

This prevents unintentional association with questionable material and upholds a company’s image in the digital advertising industry.

What are the ad verification standards?

Ad verification standards define how digital ads should be measured, monitored, and evaluated to ensure they meet quality, visibility, and safety requirements.

These standards help advertisers confirm that ads are displayed to the intended audience in a brand-safe environment, free from ad fraud and inappropriate ad placement. They are crucial to building trust in the digital advertising industry.

Below are the key ad verification standards followed by advertisers, publishers, and ad verification companies:

1. Viewability standards

These define when an ad impression counts as “viewable.” The most widely accepted criteria come from the Media Rating Council (MRC)⁵ and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)⁶ :

• Display ads: At least 50% of the ad pixels must be in view for at least one continuous second.
• Video ads: At least 50% of the video must be in view for 2 continuous seconds.
• A higher percentage may be required for larger ad formats (e.g., 30% in view for rich media).

Ad verification tools use these criteria to assess whether ads appear where and how they’re supposed to.

2. Brand safety and suitability standards

These define what types of content are considered unsafe or unsuitable for ads. Ad verification vendors scan page content to block or flag:

• Inappropriate or harmful content: violence, hate speech, adult content
• Fake news, misinformation
• Malicious ads or deceptive pages
• Inappropriate ad placement: ads on piracy websites or next to controversial material

Advertisers can define brand suitability preferences to avoid content that may be legal but still harmful to their image.

3. Ad fraud prevention standards

These standards focus on detecting and preventing fraudulent activity in ad delivery:

• Bot traffic: fake impressions or clicks generated by software
• Invalid traffic (IVT): non-human traffic or traffic from deceptive sources
• Ad stacking: placing multiple ads in a single ad slot where only one is visible
• Ad hijacking: replacing a legitimate ad markup with a fraudulent ad
• Hidden ads or ads invisible to users

Ad verification services use real-time scanning and machine learning to flag and block these threats.

4. Geo-targeting and audience validation

To ensure campaigns reach the right people in the right location:

• Ads must be shown to users in target geographies and matched with campaign parameters
• Ads must be delivered to real, verified users (not fake users or gaming attribution models)
• Verification tags are embedded to monitor where and how ads are displayed

These checks confirm that digital ads meet the intended demographic and behavioral criteria.

Ad verification solutions and their capabilities

How do ads get verified?

1. Confirm that the traffic comes from a human

One of the first checks in ad verification is confirming whether the ad impression was generated by a real user, not a bot.

• Invalid traffic (IVT), including bot traffic, click farms, and fake users, inflates performance numbers and wastes advertisers’ money.
• Ad verification vendors monitor signals like:
  • Unusual frequency of clicks from the same IP
  • Traffic coming from data centers or proxy networks
  • Lack of in-app events following the ad interaction

These checks help block fraudulent ads and improve ad fraud prevention by stopping advertising dollars from going to fake impressions.

2. Measure the size and placement of the ad

Ad placements matter. Ads that are too small, in the wrong location, or overlap multiple ads through ad stacking lose effectiveness.

Verification systems check:

• Is the ad markup correct?
• Does the ad slot match campaign parameters?
• Are ads displayed where they were planned to appear?

Ad verification tools use web crawlers or page scans to audit whether the ad was placed correctly.

Errors often happen due to incorrect ad campaign settings or miscommunication with ad networks, so this stage prevents inappropriate ad placement and protects campaign performance.

3. Make sure the ad is viewable

An ad never seen has no value, even if it technically “loads.”

• Viewability means an ad was in a position where it could be seen.
• Ad verification companies apply viewability standards (e.g., 50% of the ad pixels in view for at least 1 second).
• This is measured using verification tags embedded into the ad tags.
• Platforms like Facebook provide viewability reports, but third-party ad verification solutions offer independent auditing and ensure ads meet pre-established criteria.

4. Check whether the ad is displayed on a safe platform

Brand safety is a major concern. No advertiser wants video or digital ads to appear next to inappropriate or harmful content.

• Ad verification work includes scanning text and images to detect content related to:
  • Violence
  • Hate speech
  • Political extremism
  • Fake news or offensive material
• Advanced tools use:
  • Natural language processing (NLP) to analyze page sentiment
  • Image recognition to detect graphic visuals
  • Domain-level blocklists for malicious ads

However, brand suitability can vary, and ad verification systems require constant monitoring to avoid inappropriate ad placement.

5. Verify the audience of the ad

Just because an ad is shown doesn’t mean it’s shown to the target audience. Audience verification measures whether digital advertising campaigns reach the right demographic.

• Platforms like Google and Facebook use:
  • Logged-in user data
  • Cookies and behavioral profiles
  • Reports adjusted for incognito sessions or unauthentic accounts
• Third-party ad verification services may build online panels to track exposure and verify user attributes.
• While not 100% precise (due to cookie deletion or user privacy), these insights help optimize ad spending and avoid wasted impressions on off-target users.

Which vendor is best for each use case?

• For full-stack ad verification across all dimensions: Integral Ad Science or DoubleVerify
  • These platforms cover ad fraud prevention, brand safety, and audience verification with extensive global reach.
• For CTV, mobile apps & programmatic focus: Pixalate
  • Best for verifying ads in mobile apps, connected TV (CTV), and ad exchanges with real-time IVT detection.
• For independent viewability & placement verification: MOAT or Comscore
  • Ideal if you’re looking for strong support on viewability metrics and campaign performance analysis.

External Links

• 1. Global cost of digital ad fraud 2028| Statista. Statista
• 2. Roles - Brands and Agencies - DoubleVerify. DoubleVerify
• 3. Ad Fraud Protection & Detection Solutions | Integral Ad Science. Integral Ad Science
• 4. Assembly AdWatch Case Study - GeoEdge. GeoEdge
• 5. Home | MRC.
• 6. Home Page - IAB Certification.