How will the 2020 elections affect brands? With all its inevitable controversy, the 2020 election cycle should heighten brand safety concerns for marketers. An election year also means that candidates will be investing in media to reach voters, likely creating price hikes due to increased demand for limited inventory across channels and causing brands to rethink some strategies.

Not far behind were brand safety, ad fraud and viewability. Such issues have followed programmatic advertising around like a bad smell. Problems around fraud and brand safety, in particular, found their way into the mainstream press in the past several years, with programmatic often cited—rightly or wrongly—as the culprit for such issues.

The growth of connected TV (CTV) has been a rousing success story; unfortunately, fraudsters have noticed. As advertising budgets shift to CTV, alleviating safety concerns becomes increasingly paramount.

Not far behind were brand safety, ad fraud and viewability. Such issues have followed programmatic advertising around like a bad smell. Problems around fraud and brand safety, in particular, found their way into the mainstream press in the past several years, with programmatic often cited—rightly or wrongly—as the culprit for such issues.

Digital ad fraud is still a major problem in the programmatic ecosystem, with advertiser losses estimated in the billions of dollars annually. This report explores how advertisers, publishers and partners are protecting themselves.

Following its initial brand safety issue a few years ago, YouTube allowed external ad verification systems into its platform. In June 2019, Nielsen expanded its YouTube measurements to 26 more international markets, bringing its total to 34. And during the IAB NewFronts in May 2019, YouTube announced that all its original programs will be available for free with ads.

There are obviously games that pose brand-safety issues, such as violent battle royale games, but these generally have fewer ads, and brands can choose the environments they want to appear in. “The approach today in mobile gaming, for brand safety, is just to blacklist and whitelist the applications,” said Daniel Avital, chief strategy officer at ad verification service Cheq.

., fraud, brand safety). Q: Why doesn’t eMarketer have a worldwide estimate? Are you adding any additional countries into your programmatic forecasts?