“We ensure that publishers have the opportunity to view reports and gain insights on the quality of their inventory so that they can make the necessary adjustments to avoid being flagged as MFA or Ad Clutter,” said Scott Pierce, head of fraud protection at IAS. “By making these adjustments, publishers can actually increase the quality and value of their inventory and drive greater revenue.”
Despite the gripes, brands need solutions to avoid MFA websites, two buyers told ADWEEK, especially during a yearslong industrywide panic and recent research from Adalytics finding that major brands still end up on MFA sites.
MFA tools get more nuance
DV’s solution, released widely in February, offers a three-tiered classification of MFA from high to low, based on criteria like dependence on paid traffic, significant ad density, ad refreshing frequency, endless scrolling or clicking within the same domain and verbatim content duplication across various websites.
DV said it does not block entire sites, but it weighs different sections of a site accordingly, regularly audits its categorization criteria and uses a combination of human review and AI to check its classification.
Pierce told ADWEEK in a previous conversation that IAS prefers to define MFA as made for arbitrage—using paid traffic and programmatic systems to extract a profit—and it is working to make sure that its tool will not unfairly penalize small publishers or minority-owned publishers that might occasionally use paid traffic to meet advertiser goals.
IAS crafted its tech with metadata from Sincera, the Association of National Advertisers’ definition of MFA and a domain list from Jounce Media.
Definitions are still woolly
Several trade bodies came to a definition of MFA in September 2023, which included MFA as having a high ad-to-content ratio, rapidly refreshing ad placements, a high percentage of paid traffic, generic and non-unique content and a poorly designed website. There are efforts to refine the definition.
“The criteria altogether compose a good definition,” the first publisher said. “Elements of it alone are not distinct enough. You can have a great content site that has a lot of ads. While that might be a poor advertising experience, it isn’t a made-for-arbitrage site.”
Publishers struggle to know what combinations of guidelines are used to judge their sites since most don’t have a direct relationship with the firms, said Justin Wohl, chief revenue officer at Snopes.com and TV Tropes.
“As an individual publisher, you don’t know (if you’re blocked). You hope that you have relationships with your partners,” he said, adding that SSPs alerting publishers to a block and rectifying it directly is relatively rare.
Fraud detection firm DeepSee, along with other industry players including ANA, 4As, the Brand Safety Institute and Jounce, is in the early stages of creating a portal where publishers can see whether they are classified as MFA, said DeepSee CEO Rocky Moss. He added that IAS, DV and Pixalate will be asked to participate.