Mobile Web Display Risk Is Increasing!
The 21st edition of the IAS Media Quality Report draws on more than 300 billion digital interactions each day to deliver actionable benchmarks for advertisers. Its 2025 findings show broad improvement in media quality, but the progress is uneven, with risks concentrated in mobile web display.
Disproportion Between Risk and Volume
Mobile web display accounted for 45.1% of open web impressions in 2025, yet it drove:
54.9% of brand suitability failures
71.9% of Made-for-Advertising (MFA) impressions
71.5% of ad clutter impressions
This level of disproportion is not seen across any other media type.
The Gap Between Desktop and Mobile Web Is Widening
The scale of the risk becomes clearer when comparing desktop and mobile web.
Mobile web display performs worse in terms of Brand Suitability Fail, MFA, and Viewability rates.
Ad clutter is rising; Invalid Traffic remains a concern
Global invalid traffic held broadly steady at 1.1% throughout 2025, but the threat continues to evolve. The report notes that fraudsters are using AI to create fake inventory that mimics legitimate publishers, with the threat extending to Connected TV (CTV).
The most notable negative development of the year was the sharp increase in Ad Clutter, rising from 0.3% in January to 0.8% in December under year-end pressure. As advertisers increasingly add attention-focused KPIs, rising ad clutter has become one of the biggest obstacles to media efficiency.
Conclusion: Stricter Quality Controls Are Essential
All these findings show that advertisers need to implement much stricter quality controls when running their campaigns, particularly in the mobile web environment. The report emphasizes that an effective media quality strategy requires continuous optimization.
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