Made-for-advertising websites and their impact on the web

Made-for-advertising websites accounted for up to 15% of programmatic impressions in 2024 (Adalytics, 2024). In the present digital advertising era, made-for-advertising websites are emerging as a pressing concern.

The magnitude of the problem is significant. In 2023, global advertisers collectively paid $20 billion to be on these inferior sites. In the United States alone, 15% of media ad spending ended up on MFA sites in late 2022 to early 2023, falling to 4% in mid-2024.

Despite their questionable content, these sites often report inflated viewability rates of 60%, compared to 55% for non-MFA sites. Yet only 8% of companies monitor their spending on MFA traffic, so most do not know where their money is going.

We will explain how MFA websites work, how to detect them, and how to protect your campaigns from low-quality traffic.

What are made-for-advertising websites, and why do they exist?

Made-for-advertising websites are designed to generate revenue mainly from ads rather than deliver purposeful, user-centric content.

Unlike genuine websites that live to inform, educate, or entertain their visitors, Made-for-advertising websites are optimized for page views, ad impressions, and clicks, oftentimes at the expense of content and user experience.

These websites usually observe a standard pattern designed to deceive ad networks and search engine robots. They tend to:

1. Employ clickbait titles to trick visitors into clicking even though the content does not meet the title’s expectations. Sensational or deceptive titles are popular methods for artificially boosting traffic.
2. Ads load on the page, sometimes including two or more optional ads above the fold, within the text, and following articles; this creates a long, ad-ridden experience that prioritizes monetization over readability.
3. Serve as content farms or offer recycled or AI-written content with minimal effort, originality, or editorial oversight.
4. Employ deceptive design patterns (dark patterns) such as hidden ad placements, confusing navigation, or hidden download buttons that trick users into clicking mistakenly.
5. Employ aggressive SEO tactics such as keyword spamming, backlink schemes, or cloaking to artificially increase search rankings, only to be penalized later by search engines when discovered.

Key characteristics of Made-for-advertising websites

Made-for-advertising websites are designed to value ad income over user experience. It is important to identify their characteristics for advertisers, publishers, and users as much as for anyone else.

Below are the most prevalent indicators that a site might be an MFA site, saving you from low-quality, advertisement-drenched sites that offer little real value.

Common characteristics of Made-for-advertising websites

The characteristics of made-for-advertising websites include:

1. Ad overload: MFA sites are loaded with autoplay video, pop-ups, banners, and native ads, and space above the fold tends to fill. This leads to slow loads and a terrible user experience.
2. Low-quality or duplicate content: Content is skimpy, plagiarized, or machine-generated. It has no value, lacks originality, and could be badly written or generally rewritten from somewhere else.
3. High bounce rates: Users leave the site shortly due to poor content quality, bothersome layouts, and disruptive ads. Despite this, the site continues to earn money through ad impressions.
4. Clickbait titles: These websites utilize sensationalized or misleading headlines to entice clicks. The content often fails to fulfill the title’s promise, leading to user disappointment.
5. Fake navigation and misleading layouts: Design elements can be intentionally deceptive, such as ads pretending to be navigation links or download icons, to trick users into clicking.
6. SEO for bots, not people: These sites tend to rely on keyword stuffing, overuse of tags, and crummy layout to manipulate search engine rankings, rather than building content around legitimate user value.

Why made-for-advertising websites can drain your PPC budget

Made-for-advertising websites are harmful due to the following:

1. Bad user experience: Users are bombarded with MFA ads and thin content, which leads to frustration and mistrust of web results.
2. Ad waste: Publishers inadvertently monetize MFA sites via programmatic platforms, leading to bad ROI on ad campaigns.
3. Damage to brand reputation: If your ads appear on MFA sites, it may damage your brand by association, especially when users associate it with spammy contexts.
4. Search engine pollution: MFA content dilutes genuine, high-quality content in search results and makes it harder for users to find trustworthy sources.

How to detect and exclude MFA sites in your programmatic buys

While others are outright blatant, some MFA sites are sneaky. The following are methods and tools to spot them:

1. Manual inspection

• Count ads.
• Assess content uniqueness.
• Optimize site speed and mobile responsiveness.
• Visit the About or Contact pages; MFA sites lack transparency.

2. Utilize Ad verification tools: DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS) can identify low-quality inventory in real-time.

3. Audit traffic sources: MFA websites usually rely on inexpensive paid traffic or arbitrage traffic (buying traffic from one source to profit from another).

4. Check the domain’s reputation: Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, SimilarWeb, and Google Safe Browsing can help you understand the domain’s history, backlinks, quality, and traffic.

How advertisers can protect themselves

Advertisers can protect themselves in the following ways:

1. Use blocklists: Implement domain exclusion lists within your ad platforms to avoid appearing on known MFA destinations.
2. Use programmatic tools with caution: Choose platforms that offer transparency in the quality of the inventory and allow you to audit where your ads display manually.
3. Demand better standards: Work with good-quality publishers. Use whitelists rather than relying on algorithmic placement.
4. Monitor performance closely: Consider factors such as time on site, bounce rate, and conversion rate rather than impressions or clicks alone.

What publishers and search engines can do

They include:

1. Enforce content quality regulations: Search engines will prefer user-centric content and penalize domains violating these regulations.
2. Better detection algorithms: Platforms can more efficiently identify patterns of substandard MFA behavior using machine learning, especially when the content is AI-based.
3. Ad ecosystem transparency: Ad tech vendors must improve supply chain transparency so that advertisers know precisely where their money is going.

MFA sites versus real publishers: Differences

Not all ad-ridden websites are MFA (made-for-advertising) websites. Many genuine news publishers and bloggers employ ads to support their work without sacrificing content quality and user trust.

The variation lies in intent and implementation. This is how they differentiate:

1. Value of content

• MFA site: It is low-quality, recycled, copied, or auto-generated.
• Legitimate publisher: Authentically original, well-researched, and provides genuine value.

2. Ad density

• MFA site: Ad-rich; banner ads, pop-ups, auto-playing videos, etc.
• Legitimate publisher: Ads are present but in moderation; they do not disrupt reading.

3. User focus

• MFA site: Designed for ad revenue first; user engagement second.
• Legitimate publisher: Prioritizes the reader’s needs, experience, and trust.

4. Navigation

• MFA site: Often cluttered or confusing to encourage unintentional click-through on ads.
• Legitimate publisher: Uncomplicated, easy-to-navigate layout with accessibility and usability priorities.

5. Source transparency

• The MFA site lacks clear authorship and contact information, which can make it appear anonymous.
• Legitimate publisher: Easily recognizable regarding authors, editorial staff, and contact details.

Staying one step ahead of MFA sites

MFA sites, masquerading quite often as legitimate web pages, prioritize ad revenue over content value, resulting in poor user experience and misuse of advertiser budgets.

Unlike legitimate ad-supported web properties, the sites fill the web with low-value content often produced by artificial intelligence. Halting their spread must come through education for advertisers, publishers, and users.

Technologies such as ad verification, traffic audits, and enhanced transparency in the digital supply chain help to reduce exposure. As MFA techniques get more sophisticated, search engines and ad networks must up their detection game.

Ultimately, a trustworthy internet is all about quality, not quantity, and maintaining content integrity throughout the web. Stop wasting ad spend, block MFA sites, and protect your brand.

FAQs

Q.1 Are all advertising-sponsored sites made-for-advertising websites?

No. There are legitimate websites that rely on advertising revenue. The difference is in content quality and user value. MFA sites are income-driven first, typically serving up low-value or spammy content.

Q. 2 Is it illegal to run an MFA site?

Although not technically illegal, MFA sites often violate advertising platform policies and search engine guidelines, and they can get blacklisted or penalized.

Q. 3 How do I know if a website is MFA or not?

Look for warning signs, such as many adverts, clickbait headlines, poor grammar, vague authorship, and very short or AI-generated content. Use tools for domain analysis or ad verification sites.

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