Pixalate, the company that builds technology to detect ad fraud and enforce privacy compliance, announced the release of the second generation of its Web Seller Trust Index (STI 2.0). The refreshed index expands coverage to more than 125 open‑programmatic ad sellers operating in over twenty countries and introduces a suite of new metrics that let media buyers see, on a per‑seller and per‑market basis, how much of the traffic they are buying arrives through a verified direct path versus an arbitrage‑heavy supply chain.
The move arrives at a time when programmatic buyers are still grappling with the “tech tax” of opaque supply paths. While the industry has long promoted Supply‑Path Optimization (SPO) as a way to trim unnecessary intermediaries, most buyers lack independent data that separates genuine publisher‑direct inventory from traffic that has been re‑sold or “arbitraged” through multiple hops. Pixalate’s STI 2.0 attempts to fill that gap with a publicly available, quarterly‑updated scorecard.
Why a New Index Matters
Programmatic advertising has become the dominant method for buying digital display, video, and native inventory. Yet the ecosystem’s complexity—hundreds of supply‑side platforms (SSPs), ad exchanges, and header‑bidding wrappers—means that a single impression can travel through several undisclosed layers before reaching a publisher’s site. Each additional hop adds latency, cost, and risk of fraud, and it erodes the transparency that advertisers expect.
“Buyers want to be one hop from the publisher at scale,” said Jalal Nasir, Pixalate’s chief executive officer, in the launch statement. “Now they can see, seller by seller and market by market, who actually holds direct publisher relationships and who is adding hops.” By quantifying the proportion of traffic that bypasses authorized‑direct paths, the index gives agencies and brands a data‑driven way to prioritize sellers that deliver cleaner, more cost‑effective impressions.
Inside the STI 2.0 Methodology
The index builds on three core data points for every seller‑country pair:
- What Sellers Claim – The count of publishers that list the seller as a “DIRECT” partner in their ads.txt files, as identified by Pixalate’s crawlers.
- Verification of Seller Claims – The ratio of measured impressions that actually travel through an authorized‑direct supply chain, derived from Pixalate’s Supply‑Chain Object (SCO) analysis.
- Seller Arbitrage Risk – An independent risk rating that flags sellers who route more than half of their volume through resale channels.
These inputs feed into a composite score that balances three derived metrics:
| Metric | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Arbitraged Inventory Ratio | Percentage of impressions that never pass through an authorized‑direct path, indicating the share sold as a reseller or arbitrage intermediary. |
| ‘DIRECT’ Publisher Penetration | Number of websites with open‑programmatic activity that list the seller as DIRECT in ads.txt – a proxy for the seller’s potential direct reach in a given market. |
| SIVT Ratio | Sophisticated Invalid Traffic as a share of total impressions, measured against MRC‑accredited standards. |
| GIVT Ratio | General Invalid Traffic, covering known bots, spiders, and other non‑human traffic identified through industry‑wide filtration lists. |
| MFA Traffic Ratio | Share of impressions delivered on sites flagged as Made‑For‑Advertising (MFA), which often carry lower brand safety guarantees. |
The overall ranking combines the Arbitraged Inventory Ratio, DIRECT Publisher Penetration, and Authorized‑Direct Volume, delivering a single score that buyers can use to compare sellers across geographies.
Country‑Level Arbitrage Snapshot
Pixalate’s first public data release highlights stark differences in how SSPs operate around the world. The table below shows the proportion of SSPs in each surveyed market that are primarily resellers—defined as having more than 50 % of measured impressions flowing through non‑direct paths.
| Country | # SSPs Ranked | # Reseller‑Heavy SSPs | % Reseller‑Heavy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | 7 | 4 | 57 % |
| Japan | 10 | 4 | 40 % |
| France | 24 | 8 | 33 % |
| Italy | 16 | 3 | 19 % |
| Germany | 36 | 6 | 17 % |
| Spain | 13 | 2 | 15 % |
| Mexico | 31 | 4 | 13 % |
| Canada | 37 | 4 | 11 % |
| United States | 109 | 10 | 9 % |
| United Kingdom | 29 | 1 | 3 % |
The data suggests that markets such as Turkey and Japan still have a majority of SSPs acting as intermediaries, whereas the United Kingdom shows a relatively clean supply chain landscape.
Which SSPs Are the Biggest Resellers?
A deeper dive into individual sellers reveals a long tail of platforms that frequently operate as arbitrage hubs. The following list ranks major web SSPs by the percentage of countries where they exceed the 50 % arbitrage threshold.
| Seller | # Countries Ranked | # Countries > 50 % Arbitrage | % Countries > 50 % Arbitrage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adform | 3 | 3 | 100 % |
| Eskimi | 2 | 2 | 100 % |
| LoopMe | 2 | 2 | 100 % |
| Sovrn | 17 | 13 | 76 % |
| Verve | 4 | 3 | 75 % |
| Nexxen | 9 | 5 | 56 % |
| Equativ | 13 | 7 | 54 % |
| AdYouLike S.A. | 6 | 3 | 50 % |
| Netpoint Media Gmbh | 2 | 1 | 50 % |
| Ogury | 4 | 2 | 50 % |
| Criteo Commerce Grid | 20 | 9 | 45 % |
| Typea Holdings Ltd. | 5 | 2 | 40 % |
| InMobi | 12 | 4 | 33 % |
| … | … | … | … |
(Only the top‑tier sellers are shown; the full list is available on Pixalate’s website.)
Top‑Ranked Sellers in Key Markets
Pixalate also published market‑specific leaderboards for the fourth quarter of 2025. Below are the five highest‑scoring sellers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, together with the key risk indicators that accompany each ranking.
United States (Q4 2025)
| Rank | Seller | Risks | Arbitraged Inventory Ratio | ‘DIRECT’ Publisher Penetration | SIVT Ratio | GIVT Ratio | MFA Traffic Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Index Exchange | – | 0 % | 40,561 | 10 % | <1 % | <1 % |
| 2 | Rise | – | <1 % | 20,622 | 7 % | <1 % | 34 % |
| 3 | Seedtag | – | 0 % | 19,907 | 10 % | <1 % | 24 % |
| 4 | Smile Wanted Group | High SIVT | 0 % | 19,513 | 36 % | 1 % | 44 % |
| 5 | AdaptMX | High GIVT | 0 % | 38,035 | 7 % | 6 % | <1 % |
Canada (Q4 2025)
| Rank | Seller | Risks | Arbitraged Inventory Ratio | ‘DIRECT’ Publisher Penetration | SIVT Ratio | GIVT Ratio | MFA Traffic Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Typea Holdings Ltd. | – | <1 % | 8,712 | 10 % | 3 % | 58 % |
| 2 | Seedtag | – | <1 % | 10,317 | 6 % | <1 % | 7 % |
| 3 | Google AdExchange | – | 12 % | 21,445 | 11 % | <1 % | 8 % |
| 4 | Cafemedia | High SIVT | 0 % | 3,693 | 13 % | <1 % | 12 % |
| 5 | Blockthrough | High SIVT | 0 % | 11,340 | 7 % | <1 % | 1 % |
United Kingdom (Q4 2025)
| Rank | Seller | Risks | Arbitraged Inventory Ratio | ‘DIRECT’ Publisher Penetration | SIVT Ratio | GIVT Ratio | MFA Traffic Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nexxen | – | <1 % | 13,646 | 1 % | <1 % | <1 % |
| 2 | Seedtag | – | <1 % | 8,008 | 3 % | 2 % | 41 % |
| 3 | The Ozone Project | – | <1 % | 6,997 | 1 % | <1 % | 38 % |
| 4 | Blockthrough | High SIVT | 0 % | 8,266 | 16 % | <1 % | 7 % |
| 5 | Google AdExchange | – | 8 % | 16,378 | 2 % | 2 % | 21 % |
Germany (Q4 2025)
| Rank | Seller | Risks | Arbitraged Inventory Ratio | ‘DIRECT’ Publisher Penetration | SIVT Ratio | GIVT Ratio | MFA Traffic Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PubMatic | – | 5 % | 10,892 | 1 % | <1 % | 98 % |
| 2 | AdaptMX | High GIVT | 5 % | 9,164 | 6 % | 12 % | 11 % |
| 3 | OMS | – | 0 % | 2,715 | 6 % | 1 % | 73 % |
| 4 | Google AdExchange | – | 12 % | 12,489 | 1 % | <1 % | <1 % |
| 5 | Blockthrough | – | 0 % | 3,861 | 10 % | <1 % | <1 % |
Japan (Q4 2025)
| Rank | Seller | Risks | Arbitraged Inventory Ratio | ‘DIRECT’ Publisher Penetration | SIVT Ratio | GIVT Ratio | MFA Traffic Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amazon Publisher Services | – | 4 % | 6,149 | 4 % | <1 % | 1 % |
| 2 | Google AdExchange | – | 16 % | 6,508 | 7 % | 2 % | 2 % |
| 3 | Geniee, Inc | – | 0 % | 1,225 | 5 % | <1 % | 6 % |
| 4 | Media.Net | – | 7 % | 5,088 | 7 % | <1 % | <1 % |
| 5 | OpenX | High SIVT | 25 % | 5,683 | 38 % | <1 % | 1 % |
These rankings illustrate that even within the same market, sellers can differ dramatically in the amount of arbitraged traffic they deliver, as well as in the quality signals of SIVT, GIVT and MFA traffic.
What the Numbers Mean for Buyers
For agencies and brand marketers, the STI 2.0 data offers a practical way to prune supply chains:
- Prioritize low‑arbitrage sellers – Selecting platforms with an arbitraged inventory ratio near zero reduces the likelihood of paying for resold impressions that carry hidden fees and lower brand safety.
- Watch SIVT and GIVT flags – High Sophisticated Invalid Traffic ratios often signal advanced fraud techniques that can evade basic bot filters.
- Consider MFA exposure – A high MFA traffic ratio may indicate that a seller’s inventory leans heavily on ad‑network‑owned sites, which can be less premium than publisher‑direct placements.
By integrating these metrics into media‑buying dashboards, buyers can move beyond the “lowest CPM” mindset and instead optimize for clean, verifiable impressions.
Industry Context
The launch of STI 2.0 arrives amid growing scrutiny of programmatic supply‑chain transparency. The Media Rating Council (MRC) has recently updated its guidelines for measuring invalid traffic, and several major ad tech firms have pledged to publish “transparent supply‑chain” reports. Yet, a 2024 IAB survey still found that 68 % of buyers felt they lacked sufficient data to evaluate the quality of SSPs beyond basic viewability figures.
Pixalate’s approach differs from other industry benchmarks by leveraging its proprietary Supply‑Chain Object (SCO) analysis, which tracks the full path of each impression from the advertiser’s tag to the final display. This granularity enables the calculation of an “Authorized‑Direct Volume” metric that most third‑party measurement tools cannot provide.
How to Access the Index
All STI 2.0 rankings are hosted on Pixalate’s public portal and can be downloaded without a subscription. The company also maintains complementary indexes for mobile and connected‑TV inventory, which follow a similar methodology adapted to the specific characteristics of those channels.
Disclaimer
The figures and opinions presented in the Web Seller Trust Index are based on Pixalate’s analysis of buy‑side, predominantly open‑auction programmatic transactions. They reflect the company’s assessment of seller performance across a set of defined metrics and should not be interpreted as legal judgments or guarantees of future performance. Users of the data assume full responsibility for any decisions made on its basis.
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