MFA is the ad industry’s latest obsession – and bugbear. But the acronym may stand for something other than “made for advertising” soon.
The phrase “made for advertising” is practically meaningless on the open web, where nearly every publisher monetizes with ads. Meanwhile, there are still no universally agreed-upon criteria for classifying whether a site is MFA.
With that in mind, the 4A’s has quietly been hosting monthly meetings between advertisers and publishers – with involvement from Jounce Media and DeepSee.io, who are leading the charge to identify MFA sites.
The goal of these working groups is to craft MFA standards that can help buyers avoid junk inventory – as in, the truly crappy stuff on “made for arbitrage” websites that serve excessive ad impressions to paid traffic.
But how effective are attempts to block MFA?
Not very.
Ad tech vendors are scrambling to reduce the 15% of ad spend, as per the ANA, that gets funneled to so-called made-for-advertising sites.
Yet a new report from research firm Adalytics finds that many of the ad tech platforms claiming to have removed MFA from their supply chains are still serving ads on these sites.
The AdExchanger team breaks down the biggest offenders still monetizing MFA and analyzes why the industry isn’t likely to break its MFA habit anytime soon.
