Made-for-Advertising Website

Made-for-Advertising (heh MFA) Website

Jun26'2023: WTF are made-for-advertising sites (MFAs). Picture a web page overrun by towering banner ads and strategically positioned video ad players, morphing the browsing experience into a cacophony of commercial chaos. To the discerning human eye, this amalgamation of cluttered ads and questionable content would appear as the epitome of a digital nightmare. However, behind the scenes, the very machines that facilitate ad purchases perceive these sites as golden opportunities.

So this is really another way programmatic advertising is being gamed?

prioritize superficial success metrics like cost per viewable impressions over genuine business outcomes

While MFAs enable marketers to reach real users engaged in genuine content, the duration of their engagement is typically short-lived. This occurs when traffic is acquired through content recommendation companies rather than organically earned

ads that yield little impact on consumer behavior

In the ANA’s examination of programmatic ad dollars, MFAs accounted for 21% of the audited 35 billion impressions. This translated to 15% of the $123 million spent by 21 advertisers.

highly likely that the true extent of this issue exceeds these figures

the ANA’s findings specifically pertain to a piece of the premium part of the programmatic open marketplace, where ad buys are determined through real-time bidding auctions. Unfortunately, MFAs extend beyond these auctions. They’re also being baked into private marketplaces

To act on it would require markets to do the unthinkable. They would need to consider adopting more meaningful KPIs that effectively measure campaign success that align with tangible business metrics. Such a shift would undermine the very foundation that allows MFAs to persist. But it would also mean admitting the metrics marketers currently use are superficial.

Ad tech vendors, once dismissive of MFA inventory, are now embracing it, leading to an influx of sales opportunities for these duplicitous impressions. Publishers are also jumping on the trend, enlisting MFA specialists to maximize their ad revenue.

Jan24'2023: Advertisers: "Made for Advertising websites are toxic to your ad spend... and the planet. "Made for Advertising" websites are designed to mimic real content websites in order to capture programmatic advertising paid traffic. These websites often use misleading headlines and sensationalized content in order to attract visitors, who are then shown advertisements. They buy cheap traffic and sell it at premium CPMs.... Explore Reference, Geeky Base, The Fun Post or FAQ Toids are textbook cases of MFAs

Jul'25'2022: Caught between resignation and resistance, ad industry grapples with the prevalence of 'made-for-advertising' sites. Ad tech vendors that once steered clear of selling MFA inventory are now folding them into their own marketplaces. For example, native advertising ad tech vendor AdYouLike launched a new integration with Exorigos, a MFA publisher, in April. Even premium publishers seem just as cynical about the issue these days. Group Nine has outsourced monetization to MFA specialists to satisfy the ad arbitrage demand opportunity.

The Trade Desk is a case point. The ad tech vendor, which helps advertisers bid on programmatic inventory, blocks open auction spend against MFA inventory.