A valid CTV impression is an ad delivery that meets technical and quality standards confirming it had a genuine opportunity to be seen. The MRC (Media Rating Council) and IAB define a valid video impression as: delivered to a real device (not a bot), inside a real app (not a spoofed bundle ID), with the video player initiated and the ad starting to play. Viewability standards — which require at least 50% of the ad in-view for 2 seconds — are borrowed from digital video but apply differently to CTV, where the full-screen nature of TV means the entire ad is always in view if delivered correctly.
In India CTV, invalid impression types to watch for include: (1) App spoofing — fraudulent apps claiming to be premium OTT publishers in the bid request; (2) Device spoofing — mobile or desktop traffic masquerading as CTV in the supply chain; (3) Automated traffic — bot-driven impression generation without a real viewer. To protect against these, demand IAS or DoubleVerify pre-bid filtering on all programmatic CTV buys in India. Both vendors have India-specific CTV coverage, though the ecosystem is younger than the US. Direct deals with premium publishers (JioCinema, JioHotstar, SonyLIV) eliminate most app-spoofing risk at the cost of CPM flexibility.
Full guide
For a complete explanation, read: What is a valid CTV impression? MRC standards, viewability, and India context