LONDON, Aug. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pixalate, an ad fraud and privacy compliance platform, today launched a dedicated IPv6 Data Center Blocklist and expanded its existing IPv4 Data Center Blocklist — two separate weekly feeds that extend pre-bid protection against data center-originated Invalid Traffic (IVT) across both internet protocols.
Pixalate's Data Center Blocklists identify IP ranges belonging to hosting and cloud infrastructure, where ad traffic originates from servers rather than people. Advertisers, DSPs, SSPs, and ad platforms apply the lists pre-bid to filter data center traffic before transacting on it.
| Feed | Scale | What’s New | Cadence | Format |
| Data Center Blocklist (IPv4) — expanded | 111,879 CIDR ranges from 3,000+ providers | 15,241 CIDR ranges from 13 operators, including Asia-based operators | Weekly | CSV of CIDR ranges |
| Data Center Blocklist (IPv6) — new | 16,292 CIDR ranges from 66 providers at launch | The entire list | Weekly | CSV of CIDR ranges |
Data Center Traffic Is Invalid Traffic, Per MRC Standards
The Media Rating Council (MRC) classifies known invalid data center traffic as General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) — the first category listed in its Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Standards. Per the MRC standards, filtration of invalid data center traffic "originating from IPs associated to the three largest known hosting entities: Amazon AWS, Google and Microsoft" is required as a starting point, and vendors "shall supplement these lists with other information, third-party sources or other techniques ... to account for smaller data centers that may be a source of IVT."
The MRC further requires that data center lists "be maintained by vendors and subject to continuous evaluation and update."
Coverage: 3,000+ Providers Across North America, Europe & Asia
Providers covered include, but are not limited to:
- North America: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Meta, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode (Akamai), Vultr, CircleCI
- Europe: Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Leaseweb, Contabo, netcup
- Asia: Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Sakura Internet, Zenlayer
Use Cases
- DSPs, agencies, and advertising platforms: Block data center IP ranges pre-bid across both protocols, protecting advertiser spend from server-originated impressions at scale.
- SSPs and exchanges: Filter data center-originated supply before it reaches demand partners, and document GIVT filtration aligned with MRC processes.
Why IPv6 Changes the Data Center Problem
IPv6 adoption is approaching half of all internet traffic, per Google's published adoption data.
Data center infrastructure is following suit: between August 2025 and August 2026, the number of IPv6 CIDR ranges published by Google Cloud grew 109%, AWS grew 54%, and Microsoft Azure grew 22%, per Pixalate's analysis.
IPv6 makes address-level blocking impractical. A single IPv6 range can contain more addresses than the entire IPv4 internet; the whole IPv4 address space holds 2³² addresses — 4.3 billion. A single standard IPv6 subnet (a /64) holds 2⁶⁴ — 4.3 billion times more. Combined, the IPv6 ranges published by Google, AWS, and Microsoft Azure alone now span more than 1.6×10³⁰ addresses, per Pixalate’s analysis.
Server-originated traffic from IPv6 infrastructure must be filtered at the range level, using a continuously updated list of data center CIDR ranges.
Cloud IP Ranges Grew Up to 40% in the Past Year
The number of unique CIDR ranges (IPv4 and IPv6 combined) published by the three largest cloud providers grew between August 2025 and August 2026: Google Cloud (+40%), Amazon Web Services (+24%), and Microsoft Azure (+18%), per Pixalate's analysis.
Cloud regions in Virginia added 1,013 CIDR ranges (+31%) year-over-year — 18% of all net-new cloud IP ranges the three providers attributed to specific regions, more than any other location. Texas grew 49% and Iowa 26%; North America accounted for 50% of global growth.
As data center IP space expands and fragments, static or infrequently updated blocklists fall out of date.
How the Blocklists Are Compiled
Pixalate's data science team curates, validates, and continuously re-evaluates every range in the blocklists. Provider-published IP ranges and externally maintained open-source lists serve as inputs, which Pixalate verifies, deduplicates, and monitors before inclusion, alongside data center ranges identified and maintained by Pixalate's own detection.
False-positive engineering is central to the methodology: the blocklists exclude mixed-use IP ranges that carry legitimate consumer traffic — such as Apple iCloud Private Relay egress ranges — consistent with MRC guidance to exclude routing artifacts of legitimate users.
Availability
Both lists are delivered weekly via AWS RTB Fabric, FTP, APIs, and S3.
Contact Pixalate to learn more.
About Pixalate
Pixalate is a global platform specializing in privacy compliance, ad fraud prevention, and digital ad supply chain data intelligence. Founded in 2012 and recognized by UNICEF as a "key innovator" for children's online privacy, Pixalate is trusted by regulators, data researchers, advertisers, publishers, ad tech platforms, and financial analysts across the Connected TV (CTV), mobile app, and website ecosystems. Pixalate is accredited by the MRC for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT). pixalate.com
Disclaimer
The content of this press release reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Any data shared is grounded in Pixalate's proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources should not be construed as endorsements. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees. Pixalate is sharing this data not to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but, instead, to report findings and trends pertaining to programmatic advertising activity in the time period studied.
Per the MRC, "'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes. Also per the MRC, "'Invalid Traffic' is defined generally as traffic that does not meet certain ad serving quality or completeness criteria, or otherwise does not represent legitimate ad traffic that should be included in measurement counts. Among the reasons why ad traffic may be deemed invalid is it is a result of non-human traffic (spiders, bots, etc.), or activity designed to produce fraudulent traffic."
