Integral Ad Science today released the 21st edition of its Media Quality Report, documenting a 2.0% made-for-advertising rate on mobile web display against 0.5% on desktop, alongside 2025 data showing the channel generated 71.9% of all MFA impressions measured across the open web.

The report, distributed via Business Wire at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time today, draws on more than 300 billion digital interactions captured each day, according to IAS. The dataset covers calendar-year 2025 benchmarks for display and video formats across desktop and mobile web, with regional deep dives, country-level metrics, and vertical-level breakdowns, alongside channel-specific data for Connected TV and social environments. A companion workbook accompanies the report for benchmark lookups by duration, region, environment, and purchase method.

The publication lands two days after IAS appointed Lidiane Jones as chief executive officer, succeeding Lisa Utzschneider after more than seven years. "In an era of AI-accelerated content, buying massive scale is no longer enough; winning brands are optimizing for verified attention that drives business outcomes," Jones said in the announcement.

Mobile web display concentrates the waste

One environment dominates the risk picture. Mobile web display accounted for 45.1% of the 2025 open web impressions IAS analyzed, more than any other single media type, yet its share of quality problems ran far ahead of its share of volume. According to the report, the channel harbored 54.9% of brand suitability failures, 71.9% of made-for-advertising impressions, and 71.5% of global ad clutter impressions. No other environment contributed such a disproportionate concentration of quality risk relative to its impression share, according to IAS.

The rates behind those shares are specific. The MFA rate on mobile web display reached 2.0% during 2025, four times the 0.5% recorded on desktop browser display. The brand suitability fail rate on mobile web ran 1.7 times higher than the desktop baseline. Display viewability on mobile web reached 64.5%, trailing desktop browser display at 71.6%.

According to the report, the concentration is structural rather than incidental. Mobile web pages carry higher ad density and faster scroll rates that compress time-in-view, conditions IAS expects contribute to the proliferation of low-quality inventory surfacing disproportionately in the channel. Made-for-advertising sites, a category the IAB Australia formally defined in 2024, are properties built primarily to generate ad revenue rather than serve genuine audience needs, typically carrying auto-generated content, high ad-to-content ratios, and minimal editorial value. IAS research published in 2025 estimated that advertisers waste roughly 10 billion dollars annually on MFA inventory, a figure that framed the company's push into AI-generated content detection.

Two metrics moved in the wrong direction

Media quality improved on most major measures during 2025, according to the report, but two metrics deteriorated. Ad clutter, defined as impressions served in environments where excessive simultaneous ads reduce the likelihood any single ad captures attention, climbed from 0.3% in January 2025 to a year-high of 0.8% in December 2025. The monthly progression shows a mid-year peak of 0.5% in May, a retreat to 0.3% through July and August, then a steady climb through the fourth quarter. The late-year surge likely reflects increased ad load pressure during the holiday season, according to IAS.

Invalid traffic is the second metric the report groups with ad clutter as moving the wrong way, although the same document describes global IVT as holding broadly stable at 1.1% across 2025, with optimized campaigns averaging about 1%. The tension between those two characterizations is present in the source material itself. What the regional data shows is clearer: North America posted the highest regional IVT rate at 1.36%, and the United States led the ten largest markets at 1.40%. Fraudsters remain adaptive, following ad budgets into new environments and using AI to generate fraudulent inventory that mimics legitimate publishers, according to the report.

Protection metrics moved in the opposite direction. The global brand safety fail rate declined from 3.7 times baseline in January 2025 to 1.0 times in December, while the brand suitability fail rate dropped from 1.3 times to 1.0 times over the same period.

Video extends its viewability lead

Global video viewability reached 79.7% in 2025, outperforming display viewability of 67.9% by 11.8 percentage points. The advantage held across every major region, according to the report. Both formats improved over the course of the year, with video rising 2.4 percentage points and display gaining 1.9 percentage points.

Country-level results varied widely among the ten largest markets by impression volume. Poland delivered the highest video viewability at 84.37%, followed by Australia at 84.05%, both outperforming the global average by more than four percentage points. Japan posted the weakest result at 63.21%, more than 16 points below the global figure. Regional video viewability clustered more tightly: 81.9% for rest of world, 80.6% for EMEA, 80.2% for APAC, and 79.3% for North America.

The press release accompanying the report states that controlled campaign studies recorded a 56% increase in attention scores and a 76% decline in cost-per-click, with household-level sales lift up to 313% higher for high-attention video ads. The report itself distributes those figures across separate case studies, and the two documents do not fully align. A study with Kimberly-Clark and NCSolutions produced a 36% rise in average attention scores when expanding browser display to video and mobile in-app, a 313% higher sales lift versus campaigns exposed to below-average attention, and a 78% improvement in return on ad spend against a display-only baseline. A separate Danone campaign for Activia yogurt recorded the 56% attention score increase after activating pre-bid targeting, a result 57% higher than predicted. The 76% cost-per-click figure appears in the press release but not in the report's case study pages. The pattern matches attention findings IAS published in June, when Stellantis documented a 165% engagement increase across 13 billion impressions in 19 countries.

Quality diverged by vertical and country

Industry verticals recorded distinct quality profiles during 2025. CPG posted the lowest invalid traffic rate at 0.92% and the highest video viewability of any major vertical at 83.55%, with an MFA rate of 0.80%. Travel and Entertainment sat at the other end, with the highest IVT at 1.40%, the highest MFA rate at 1.56%, and the lowest display viewability among named verticals at 61.02%. The combination of elevated fraud and suitability signals suggests travel advertisers face particular media quality challenges, according to the report.

Suitability risk varied more across verticals than any other dimension. Retail carried the highest suitability fail rate at 1.6 times the Finance baseline, followed by Technology and Telecom at 1.5 times and Auto at 1.4 times. Finance, at 1.0 times, served as the baseline, a position the report attributes to conservative category-level content controls. Retail's result likely reflects the broad content adjacency strategies retail advertisers employ in pursuit of reach, according to IAS.

At the country level, Spain recorded the highest suitability fail rate of any top-10 market at 2.5 times the United States baseline, ahead of Italy at 2.1 times. Canada posted the lowest at 0.6 times.

Regional risk profiles pull apart

The regional breakdown shows risk taking different forms in different places. EMEA posted the highest suitability fail rate of any region at 1.5 times the North American baseline, a result the report links to content volume across European markets and the complexity of multi-language suitability classification. North America presented the inverse profile: the lowest suitability fail rate at 1.0 times, but the highest invalid traffic rate at 1.36% and the highest MFA rate at 1.50% among major regions. Those patterns reflect the concentration of programmatic spend in a larger, more open marketplace that creates more opportunities for fraudulent actors, according to the report.

APAC delivered a more balanced profile, with a 0.7% MFA rate below both North America and EMEA, though its suitability fail rate of 1.3 times exceeded the global average. The rest of world segment, at just 2.5% of impressions, recorded the highest MFA rate of any region at 2.3%, which the report reads as a sign of more aggressive MFA activity in markets where inventory quality is less established.

Sustainability measurement correlates with quality

The report documents a positive relationship between carbon measurement and media quality outcomes. Advertisers using IAS and Good-Loop to measure and reduce digital campaign carbon emissions achieved consistently stronger quality performance, according to IAS. Green-certified campaigns in EMEA recorded a 3.9 percentage point lift in quality impression rates, with measured campaigns reaching 75.1% against 71.2% for non-measured activity. Campaigns in the Travel and Entertainment vertical experienced an 8.7 percentage point lift.

Adoption is growing. The total volume of measured impressions increased 37% between January and March 2026, particularly in EMEA and specifically among CPG, Auto, and Finance advertisers, according to the report. Good-Loop open web carbon measurement is available to all IAS customers globally at no extra charge. The data suggests advertisers prioritizing carbon transparency may apply broader media quality discipline as part of a more mature media investment strategy, IAS states.

Why this matters for the marketing community

The 21st edition arrives as a benchmark reset for an industry that PPC Land has tracked through successive report cycles, including the 19th edition released on May 7, 2024, when declining viewability and election-year brand risk dominated the findings. The 2025 dataset inverts parts of that picture: viewability climbed in both formats, brand safety failures fell sharply, and the remaining risk concentrated into identifiable pockets rather than spreading evenly.

The findings extend survey data IAS published in December 2025, when the 2026 Industry Pulse Report found 88% of experts ranking digital video as a top investment priority and 84% saying the same for social media. The new benchmarks give those investment intentions a quality dimension: the formats attracting budget are also the formats delivering the highest viewability, while the environment holding the largest impression share carries the most concentrated waste.

The report also functions as a positioning document for a product line built across the past year. IAS Agent, released globally for clients in the first quarter of 2026 according to the report, brings natural-language campaign analytics to advertisers. Second-quarter 2026 data cited in the report shows CTV invalid traffic reaching 9.1% on non-optimized campaigns against 0.1% on optimized ones, an argument for the measurement continuity IAS built through Total TV in April 2026. The closing sections reference the Mastercard-powered Sales Outcomes product announced in March 2026, citing 9 times incremental sales impact for campaigns optimizing toward at least 70% media quality, 246% higher sales lift for impressions with stronger attention scores, and 133% projected return on investment for high-quality impressions. Planned protection work targets low-quality generative AI content, an area where IAS opened a detection tool to beta in April 2026, alongside supply path optimization and media classification enhancements.

For buyers, the operational takeaway sits in the report's own framing: global benchmarks are a starting point, not a destination, and protection strategies in 2026 must be as granular as the risk itself. With mobile web display representing nearly half of measured open web impressions, the data describes an environment too large to abandon and too uneven to buy without page-level scrutiny.

Timeline

  • May 7, 2024 - IAS releases the 19th edition of the Media Quality Report
  • January 2025 - Ad clutter stands at 0.3%; the global brand safety fail rate sits at 3.7 times baseline
  • May 2025 - Ad clutter peaks mid-year at 0.5% before retreating over the summer
  • December 2025 - Ad clutter reaches a year-high 0.8%; brand safety fail rate falls to 1.0 times baseline
  • December 8, 2025 - IAS publishes the 2026 Industry Pulse Report, with 88% of experts ranking digital video a top investment priority
  • First quarter 2026 - IAS Agent released globally for IAS clients, according to the report
  • January to March 2026 - Volume of Good-Loop measured impressions increases 37%
  • Second quarter 2026 - IAS data records 9.1% CTV invalid traffic on non-optimized campaigns against 0.1% on optimized campaigns
  • July 7, 2026 - IAS appoints Lidiane Jones as chief executive officer
  • July 9, 2026 - IAS releases the 21st edition of the Media Quality Report

Summary

Who: Integral Ad Science, the media quality measurement company owned by Novacap and led since July 7, 2026 by chief executive officer Lidiane Jones. The findings concern advertisers, agencies, and publishers buying and selling across the open web, Connected TV, and social channels, with named case study participants including Kimberly-Clark, NCSolutions, Danone, and Good-Loop.

What: The 21st edition of the Media Quality Report, built on more than 300 billion daily digital interactions. Headline 2025 findings include global video viewability of 79.7% against 67.9% for display, mobile web display generating 71.9% of MFA impressions and 71.5% of ad clutter from a 45.1% impression share, an MFA rate on mobile web four times the desktop level, ad clutter rising from 0.3% to 0.8% across the year, and a 3.9 percentage point quality lift for green-certified EMEA campaigns measured with Good-Loop.

When: Released today, July 9, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, covering benchmark data from calendar year 2025 plus early 2026 figures for sustainability adoption and CTV invalid traffic.

Where: Global benchmarks spanning North America, EMEA, APAC, and rest of world, with country-level detail for the ten largest markets by impression volume, from Poland's 84.37% video viewability high to Japan's 63.21% low, and Spain's 2.5 times suitability fail rate against the United States baseline.

Why: The report documents that 2025 media quality improvements were unevenly distributed, with risk concentrating in mobile web display, diverging by region and vertical, and shifting toward attention-based performance measurement. IAS frames the data as evidence that protection strategies in 2026 must match the granularity of the risk, while the release also supports the company's product line spanning attention measurement, sustainability tracking, CTV verification, and AI-generated content detection.