Integral Ad Science, the leader in quantifying digital media quality, today releases its Q2 2015 Media Quality Report. Based on the analysis of hundreds of billions of impressions in April-June 2015, the report highlights that 12.2% of UK advertising impressions were found to be fraudulent. This equates to costing UK advertisers more than £277m of their online budgets*.

Online fraud was also identified as a major barrier to further investment in programmatic trading, in the recently published IAB/MTM study**, seeing a year-on-year leap from 28% to 52% of respondents highlighting it as a key concern.

Niall Hogan, Managing Director UK, Integral Ad Science said, “Fraud is at the forefront of the media quality debate and when we see figures in the order of nearly £300m being siphoned off from ad budgets, we understand why advertisers like Unilever and Nestle are voicing concerns. It is essential that we come together as an industry, through initiatives like the JICWEBS anti-fraud group, to educate and build advertiser confidence in the ways that we can address potential media quality issues.”

In its Q2 2015 report, Integral Ad Science further examined the UK fraud figures which show that it is in the exchange and network environments that the largest activity is found, accounting for 13.6% of fraudulent impressions. While 6.6% of UK impressions on direct buys with publishers were found to be fraudulent.

Additionally, where brands want to ensure their ads appear alongside appropriate content; the Q2 2015 report highlights that the risk of inappropriate placement within network and exchange environments saw 13.6% of advertising impressions were affected, versus only 6.3% on campaigns with publishers direct. Again, buying through publishers directly also gives advertisers substantially better viewability rates with 63.4% of advertising content viewable, as opposed to 52.1% via programmatic channels.

The overall UK media quality figures, separated from global/US figures, were published for the first time last quarter; and in Q2 2015, is the first time that more detailed fraud, brand risk and viewability figures are published showing the direct and programmatic split for the UK.

To view the full UK report, visit http://integralads.com/uk-quarterly/

* IAB 2014 UK Ad Spend Report – UK online display ad spend in 2014: £2,274m.

** IAB / MTM Media Owner Sales Techniques, June 2015. A study by research and strategy consultancy MTM London to examine the major sales channels used by industry participants to buy and sell digital display inventory in the UK.