Connected TV advertising is attracting more programmatic budgets, but buyers still face a basic question: what content actually appeared behind the impression they purchased? A new Peer39 report argues that missing program-level signals and reliance on self-declared metadata are creating a verification gap that could undermine CTV’s push toward measurable, performance-oriented advertising.
CTV has spent years borrowing the buying mechanics of digital advertising while retaining the premium positioning of television. The result is a fast-growing market where advertisers can target, bid and optimize streaming inventory at scale—but may not always have enough information to independently verify the environment in which an ad ran.
That is the central issue raised by Peer39 in its latest research report, Claimed vs. Verified: The CTV Supply Authentication Gap. The company says it analyzed millions of CTV bid requests and found a significant difference between the information declared by the supply chain and signals that can be independently authenticated.
According to Peer39, approximately 60% of CTV bid requests contain no usable program-level content signal. Without that information, buyers may know the application, channel or deal through which an impression was sold without being able to reliably determine the actual program or content on screen.
That distinction is increasingly important as CTV moves deeper into programmatic advertising.
A Deal ID, for example, can establish a commercial relationship or package of inventory. It does not necessarily prove what content was being shown when an individual impression was served. Similarly, publisher-declared metadata can provide useful contextual information, but buyers have limited ability to independently validate whether those claims accurately describe the impression.
Peer39’s argument is that the industry has treated visibility as if it were verification.
“Programmatic CTV has reached a point where buyers need more transparency,” said Mario Diez, CEO of Peer39. The company argues that verification should become a foundational layer for CTV buying rather than an optional quality-control feature.
The timing is significant. The broader digital video advertising market is expanding rapidly. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) projects U.S. digital video advertising spending will surpass $80 billion in 2026, growing 11% year over year and accounting for more than 60% of total TV/video advertising spend for the first time.
At the same time, buyer confidence has not kept pace with spending.
The IAB’s 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy report found that 43% of buyers have somewhat to no confidence in the quality of CTV inventory purchased through direct insertion orders, programmatic guaranteed and self-serve buying methods. Confidence falls further for private marketplaces, at 55%, and open exchange/RTB inventory, at 67%.
That makes supply authentication a potentially important layer in the CTV technology stack.
Peer39 says its analysis found higher combined risk in deal-packaged traffic than in the open market, challenging the assumption that a Deal ID automatically represents premium or safer inventory. It also reports substantially lower risk among inventory carrying Peer39-authenticated content IDs.
The underlying issue is not simply fraud. It is signal quality.
Programmatic buyers rely on bidstream information to make decisions about contextual relevance, brand suitability, audience targeting and inventory quality. If the content signal is missing or inaccurate, those decisions become less precise. A DSP can optimize toward a particular content category, but only if the underlying signal exists and can be trusted.
Peer39 has previously described a similar problem with “Fake CTV,” where environments such as screensavers, white-noise generators and other nontraditional experiences can be classified as CTV. The company says its research found an average 6.8% of CTV impressions running on such environments, arising from 25.2% of bid requests associated with that type of content.
For advertisers, this creates a distinction between inventory access and inventory intelligence.
Major advertising ecosystems such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising increasingly support video and CTV advertising, while DSPs, SSPs and streaming publishers continue building more sophisticated programmatic marketplaces. The more automated the buying process becomes, however, the more important the underlying data becomes.
This is where independently verified content signals could become strategically important.
Authenticated program-level data can help buyers determine whether an impression aligns with the content, genre, suitability requirements or contextual objectives specified in a campaign. Peer39 says its approach applies independently verified program-level information before the bid, rather than relying solely on metadata supplied by publishers or intermediaries.
The privacy implications are also notable. Content verification can operate at the environmental and program level rather than requiring personally identifiable information. That potentially gives advertisers another way to improve contextual relevance and supply quality as identity-based targeting faces continued restrictions and signal loss.
For enterprise media teams, the practical takeaway is that CTV verification may need to become part of the buying architecture itself.
That means evaluating not only CPMs, reach, completion rates and Deal IDs, but also the provenance and authentication of the signals used to make buying decisions. Agencies and advertisers may increasingly demand independent verification from SSPs, DSPs and supply partners before considering inventory genuinely premium.
The broader shift is already visible across digital video. The IAB says targeting has overtaken content quality as the leading criterion for TV/video investment, while signal degradation and AI-driven traffic are making reliable audience and inventory signals more important.
CTV’s next stage of growth, then, may depend on something less visible than the streaming content itself: trust in the data describing it.
If programmatic television is going to compete for larger portions of linear TV budgets, advertisers will need evidence that goes beyond what a supply chain says an impression represents. Verification could become the layer that turns CTV from a highly scalable buying channel into a more defensible performance medium.
Market Landscape
CTV is moving toward a more data-driven, performance-oriented advertising model, but its supply chain remains fragmented across streaming publishers, SSPs, DSPs, data providers and private marketplaces.
The IAB projects U.S. digital video advertising will exceed $80 billion in 2026, while its latest research shows substantial buyer concerns about inventory quality across direct, private and open-market CTV transactions.
This creates an opportunity for independent verification providers. Instead of treating Deal IDs, app identifiers or publisher-declared metadata as sufficient proof, advertisers can increasingly demand authenticated program-level signals.
The competitive implication extends beyond Peer39. CTV measurement and verification vendors, DSPs, SSPs, contextual targeting companies and ad-quality platforms are likely to compete around the ability to establish supply-chain trust without relying on user-level identity data.
For enterprise advertisers, the buying question is evolving from “Can we access this CTV inventory?” to “Can we prove what inventory we actually bought?”
Top Insights
- Peer39’s CTV research identifies missing program-level signals as a major transparency problem, affecting advertisers, DSPs, SSPs and agencies managing programmatic video budgets.
- Deal IDs can establish commercial relationships but do not independently verify on-screen content, highlighting the difference between transaction visibility and supply authentication.
- IAB research shows 43% of buyers lack strong confidence in CTV inventory quality, reinforcing concerns about transparency as digital video spending accelerates.
- Authenticated content signals could improve contextual targeting, brand suitability and supply optimization without depending on personally identifiable information or user-level identity data.
- Enterprise advertisers may increasingly require independent CTV verification as streaming budgets compete with linear television, programmatic display and other addressable media channels.
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