The “Made for Ad” or MFA sites are a revenue-generating classic with little or almost no meaningful content for users. These ads have a large reach, lots of numbers but zero authentic engagement.
According to a recent study by ANA, 21% of the impressions come from the MFA websites. This means that an average of 15% of the ad spends are wasted due to these clickbait websites.
Sadly, many brands get caught out in this kind of advertising trap with ad placement alongside content that’s either low quality or irrelevant content. Many of these sites use pixel stuffing, ad stacking, and other such tactics that skew their real engagement statistics. The result: for brands high impressions but no or very low genuine engagement with fraudulent or invalid traffic.
Impact of ad placement on MFA Websites
The content and user experience on these websites are way lower than what an advertiser can expect for an ad placement. Users are navigated to non-relatable ads, providing a confusing user experience and in the majority of cases they are also directed to false navigation buttons, to increase page views per session.- Brand Reputation Damage: Having your ad placed on a low-quality site can damage the reputation of your business as consumers associate your business with such low-quality advertising sites.
- Lack of genuine Engagement: Pixel stuffing, ad stacking, and other such methods are used to inflate numbers and reflect fraudulent engagement. The illusion of high engagement metrics misleads and wastes brand resources.
- Limited Reach and Exposure: Ads placed on MFA websites cannot reach real people effectively, making brand recall where it is needed very little.
- Lack of Contextual Relevancy: Most viewers who access MFA websites are not in any way willing to purchase and/or interact with the target content or product, leading to dismal finding follow-up and therefore a low conversion rate.
- Misleading Clicks and Click Fraud: This is also quite common practice with MFA sites – click fraud, the act of creating the false appearance of website popularity through clicks that do not yield sales or any other desired behavior.
- Ad Budget Drainage: Since the chances of impressions converting to sales are minimal, MFA site ad placements are likely to be wallet-draining without any positive ad-return chances.
Take Control of Your Brand Safety
To respond to such threats to brand equity and brand safety, secure ad placement coupled with contextual relevancy with accurate and timely pre-performance identifying and blocking is a critical component. If you wish to gain an insight into the risks involved, download the infographics now or get in touch with us for further details.