Made for Advertising ticks the right boxes – but is it just unhelpful clutter?

Opinion

Made for Advertising sites generate low quality ads that are less valuable and effective, writes law partner Nick Swimer.

The Made for Advertising industry accumulates 12.3% of all programmatic web display revenue and 24.3% of all programmatic web video revenue – but is this justified?

Through using brand-safe content and offering low prices with high viewability, Made for Advertising websites are built to be highly attractive to automated ad buying systems. Yet, a closer look reveals that brands may be wasting a significant proportion of already diminishing ad budgets on these sites that distribute poor-quality, ineffective content that even if accessed, bombard the user with ultra-high frequency ads and are extremely unlikely to garner any real attention.

What is ‘Made for Advertising’?

The sole purpose of Made for Advertising websites, apps and CTV apps is to maximise ad impressions, regardless of user experience and quality of offering. For a low cost, they bombard users and generate mass traffic using filler content, clickbait headlines and networks of interlinked websites.

Researchers have noted that many of these websites load multiple banner and video ads simultaneously, covering more than 75% of the consumer device’s screen with ad content. Furthermore, the websites are configured to auto-refresh ad slots at a blistering pace, resulting in an absurdly high number of ad impressions being delivered to a given consumer in short order. Even if a media buyer configures ‘frequency caps’ to limit the number of ad exposures served to a consumer, often Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) are unable to manage those caps.

Lastly, some of the Made for Advertising sites use a technique called ‘cloaking’, wherein the visual layout of the website changes drastically depending on if a direct site visit or through Google search, rather than through paid acquisition channels such as a native ad platform.

A host of problems

Some commentators consider Made for Advertising sites akin to spam – essentially meaning brands are paying to be ignored. A regular complaint is that they often use misleading or false headings to draw in an audience.

They also pose a serious environmental risk. A study conducted in Autumn 2022 by Ebiquity and Scope3 found that Made for Advertising websites are high contributors to carbon emissions, using up to 10 Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) to indiscriminately maximise their CPM revenues. They utilise more software calls and tools, making them environmental burdens when compared to more premium sites, which only use three to four SSPs.

Despite Jounce Media reporting that 12.3% of spend in open programmatic goes to Made for Advertising websites, some industry insiders have recently noted that this figure is actually closer to 50% for some campaigns on the premium end of the market. Adalytics Research has observed specific Private Marketplace (PMP) or deal buys from large brands, where close to 50% of the campaign budget was delivered against MFA sites.

This suggests that not even curated deals can fully shield a brand from exposure to MFA inventory; in some cases, it might increase said exposure. Interestingly, great lengths are gone to in order to obfuscate the ultimate owner, perhaps indicative of the type of inventory that they are flooding the market with. Previously published research by Adalytics noted that some Made for Advertising sites use large numbers of intermediary seller IDs, and do not easily disclose a site’s corporate owner to media analysts.

All in all, Made for Advertising sites generate low quality ads that are less valuable and effective. They dilute the emotional impact of the ad, drastically impacting brand hygiene and overall reputation. Clearly, these types of sites value short term revenue instead of building long term relationships with consumers and advertisers.

The legal landscape

These MFA sites are as “brand safe” and “highly viewable” as possible.  Set against the traditional programmatic KPIs, they do an excellent job of hitting all the right criteria. That is what makes them “made” for advertising.

Accordingly, they are not regarded by vendors as invalid traffic, so it is up to the brands to fully consider whether they believe ads viewed on Made for Advertising sites, apps or CTV apps will garner any meaningful attention and serve campaign objectives in relation to either brand building or performance. If they do not believe that they are getting anything other than inefficient advertising (albeit at cheaper CPMs) they ought to consider steering clear of these sites and incentivising their agencies to do the same.

Brands must use tight definitions to ensure their programmatic guardrails in their media buying agreements set strict guidelines and standards for how and where their products and services should and must not be advertised regardless of brand safety and viewability.

Ultimately, this may tend to prevent more granularity in the metrics and KPIs and investment by the measurement vendors. These guardrails must also be effectively activated, policed, enforced and most importantly, be reviewed by specialist auditors as part of the ongoing performance measurement framework in order to be effective.