Five years ago, IAB Tech Lab published clear, platform-specific guidelines for how app inventory should be identified and verified across CTV and mobile. We audited apps across six major platforms — Google Play, Apple App Store, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and LG Smart TV — to measure how well that standard has taken hold. The compliance gap we found grows more severe as spend migrates into the CTV environments buyers are prioritizing today. On LG, 91% of apps carry no ads.txt file. On Roku, 86%. Even where signals exist, nearly 40% of Google Play apps host their privacy policies on low-trust infrastructure like Blogspot pages and Google Docs — checking the compliance box without the accountability behind it. This report presents our findings across store-level metadata, app-level compliance, infrastructure quality, and the risk categories that move into the spaces where verification breaks down.
