What Makes MFA Hard for the Industry to Avoid?

MFA, or “Made For Advertising”, is the boogeyman of digital advertising, scooping up some $20 billion of wasted ad spend on bot sites, unviewable ads, or ad farms. The Association of National Advertisers reports that buyers have been spending less on MFA overall in the last few years, but it’s been on the rise in recent months.

We all know MFA sites when we see them; so why are they so hard to circumvent? Part of it is the lengths such sites will go to trick algorithms and ad servers into placing ads there, but it runs deeper than that alone: there are different levels of MFA, and that makes defining them a challenge. This is why it is not just as important as ever but is required to have additional protection and filtration for your ad buying process. In this article, you will learn just how Genius Monkey is able to identify these and help avoid MFA sites not just on the post-serving side but to avoid them pre-bid.

There is No Industry-Standard Definition for MFA

Most websites are designed to incorporate advertisements of some kind, and drawing the line on what is acceptable isn’t so cut and dry. Should any site with advertisements be considered MFA? Of course not, but plenty of legitimate “for content” sites can have a lot of ad calls that some systems will flag as MFA. As of now, there is no industry-standard on what designates a site as MFA, though some companies are attempting to create one.

Several big-name digital advertising governing agencies such as ANA, IAB Tech Lab, and the Brand Safety Institute have hosted regular meetings with research groups (such as Jounce Media and DeepSee.io) to lock down the criteria for classifying MFA sites. At time of writing, no major DSPs, SSPs, or ad verification platforms have been part of these deliberations.

Currently, the magic ad-to-content ratio, as defined by this group, is around 30%, but this figure is in constant flux. Some argue that getting too specific with the definition may do more harm than good by letting bad actors fly under the radar through apparent compliance. Even while searching for a concrete definition, most experts agree that MFA is best evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

This is made more complicated by the fact that websites can have differing levels of ads or MFA tactics on different pages within them. A homepage may place ads differently than a blog post within the site, further muddying the waters; should an entire site be avoided because of isolated pages displaying MFA-like behavior? Clear lines to draw are in short supply, and the tactics of MFA sites are also constantly on the move.

The Latest MFA Issue

As technology advances in ad security, it also advances for scammers. MFA placements are rising across each and every single DSP and platform, and Genius Monkey finds most of it has derived from a common source: Google. As noted by the recent court case with the DOJ, the tech giant has its fingers in all steps of the ad-buying process: Google Adsense sells inventory to all major platforms and takes up more than half of the ad publishing market share, making it impossible to avoid buying ad space on Google Publisher sites regardless of your DSP choice.

Genius Monkey has observed a massive influx in AI generated MFA websites in GDN through all platforms. This is happening across all DSPs (Yahoo, Tradedesk, Microsoft, etc) because, as noted above, Google AdSense has the largest market share for website monetization, meaning no matter who you buy through, you are still going to be affected at some level by the MFA / AI issue.

Artificial Intelligence – heralded by many in the tech world as some kind of efficiency savior – has come full circle and is now being used to quickly generate legitimate-looking websites that can trick Google into selling ad space. By the time Google catches the site and blacklists it, a new site with one character difference in the domain is spun up almost instantly.

Hopefully, Google can come to a solution for identifying AI generated sites sooner than later. In the meantime – and with MFA finding some extra wind in its sails – it’s more important than ever to learn how they can be detected and avoided. To do that, we have to understand the shades of gray within MFA.

The Made-For-Advertising Spectrum

For starters, made-for-advertising and ad fraud are not the same thing; many MFA sites employ fraudulent tactics to get their traffic and clicks, but MFA as a concept is not illegal in itself. There are many legal means of securing website traffic which most websites use; MFA sites simply sit on the higher end of the spectrum in the use of such tactics. It’s largely up to the discretion of advertisers and their platforms to draw their own line on what is acceptable.

Let’s look at an example: DoubleVerify and ClickCease are verification systems that Genius Monkey employs not only for securing ad placements, but also increasing accuracy with CTV impressions. The DoubleVerify system grades websites based on the number of MFA tactics used. These signs include:

• High ratios of paid traffic
• Poor-quality or predominantly AI-generated content
• Rapidly refreshing ads
• High ad-to-content density
• Template or otherwise low-effort site design
• Endless scrolling or slideshows
• Low ratios of organic traffic
• Ads overlapping the content
• Content is reproduced across multiple pages

Pages that use less than 5 of such tactics are considered “low” on DoubleVerify’s tiered MFA solution. Any with 5 to 7 are considered “moderate”, while those using more than 7 are “high”. DoubleVerify can even distinguish various levels of MFA within a single site. By communicating MFA tiers through the system, advertisers are given the information they need to make their own decisions on where to place their ads.

Sun Tzu said that “if you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”. While the technical definition is in debate, knowing what to look for will give you an advantage in the fight against MFA.

All of these things further complicate what used to be a simple process to run a programmatic campaign. This is why it is necessary to have a trusted vendor such as Genius Monkey that has the tools in place to identify things like the MFA issue and has the ability and technology to be able to buy around it.

Keep Humans in at Least One Line of Defense

However good your automated verification system is, humans will always have the advantage in understanding context. In the most recent GDN issue highlighted above, it is clear that the automated systems are not catching the AI-generated MFA sites in a reasonable time.

Genius Monkey, however, has a full team of people now adding hundreds of AI MFA sites to global blacklists multiple times a day. By having a team of real people watching over your placements, you’ll add another layer of security to your strategy and give your campaigns an even better chance of success.

Triple-Layered Programmatic Protection

MFA, ad fraud, and myriad other sites and situations are working overtime to game the system. Thankfully, there are several things advertisers can do to ensure their ad spend is spent well, and there’s no better method than partnering with a proven programmatic platform.

Genius Monkey utilizes a triple-layered verification system to make sure users’ ads are being placed where they expect and being seen by the audience they want. By avoiding MFA and other shady deals, the platform helps improve ad performance and your return on investment.

To see it in action – while increasing conversions and lowering your costs – come talk with the Genius Monkeys today!