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What are made-for-advertising websites?
Made-for-advertising (MFA) sites are crammed with as many ads as possible, drawing in visitors with spammy clickbait, fake news, and conspiracy content.
Who makes these sites?
Typically, anyone who wants to make a quick buck and has time to write and/or steal some content. But this week Forbes broke that trend when it was found to have been running what appeared to be a second, MFA version of its own website. Its stories were repackaged to be more like clickbait and served with over 200 ads (compared to three to 10 on a regular story).
Is this allowed?
Technically, MFA sites don’t break any rules. They have content and get visitors — those visitors are just landing on a site that’s a spammy nightmare. And people don’t stay on spammy nightmare sites for very long, or trust the ads they see there, which is why advertisers consider it a problem.
So why do advertisers buy ad space on these sites?
It’s usually an accident. Most online ads are bought programmatically — automated platforms target ads based on the audience a brand wants to reach, as well as its budget. Programmatic platforms don’t know that MFA sites are terrible, but they do see that the space is cheap, so ads usually get placed there without a brand knowing.
How big of a problem is it?
In the Forbes case, an executive at one major brand estimated that 28% of ads they thought were on the main Forbes website were actually on the MFA version. More broadly, the Association of National Advertisers last year estimated that MFA sites got 15% of programmatic ad spending in the U.S. alone, representing about US$10 billion.