What are made-for-advertising (MFA) sites, and how do buyers keep them off a plan?
Part of MFA avoidance
The short answer
Made-for-advertising (MFA) sites are websites built mainly to sell ad impressions rather than to serve readers. They buy traffic, pack pages with ads that refresh quickly, and resell the attention at a margin. Buyers keep them off a plan by checking ad density, traffic sources and content quality before a site reaches the inclusion list.
Key takeaways
- MFA sites resell ad impressions at a margin: they buy visits, fill pages with refreshing ads and keep the spread.
- In the ANA's 2023 study MFA sites took 21 percent of impressions and 15 percent of spend; among the ANA's benchmark participants MFA exposure was 1.1 percent in Q1 2026, after 0.4 to 0.6 percent through 2025.
- MFA inventory can look good on viewability, fraud and brand safety reports, so it has to be caught at the planning stage.
- A reliable review combines page layout, traffic sources, content quality, the selling path and real audience in the market.
What makes a website a made-for-advertising site?
A made-for-advertising site, shortened to MFA, is a website whose business model is the gap between what it pays for visitors and what it earns from showing them ads. In September 2023 four trade groups, the ANA (opens in a new tab), the 4A's, the World Federation of Advertisers and ISBA, published a shared definition: MFA sites are created to simultaneously buy and sell advertising inventory. The 4A's also calls them made for arbitrage sites.
Definition
- Made-for-advertising (MFA) site
- A website built mainly to resell ad impressions at a margin. It buys visits, such as through paid links, then earns more from the ads it shows those visitors than it paid to bring them in.
The trade groups did not set a single pass or fail test. They listed five characteristics that MFA sites usually show in some combination, and left each advertiser to decide where its own line sits.
| Characteristic | What the trade groups describe | What a buyer can check |
|---|---|---|
| High ad-to-content ratio | Usually at least twice the internet average; their example is 30 percent or more of a desktop page | Estimate how much of the screen ads take up on several articles, on desktop and on a phone |
| Rapidly refreshing ad placements | Refreshing banners, autoplay video and slideshows that force a click for every page | Leave a page open for a minute and count how often ad slots reload |
| High share of paid traffic | Little or no organic audience; visits bought through clickbait ads on social networks and recommendation widgets | Look for sponsored link units pointing to the site and for missing organic popularity |
| Generic content | Syndicated, dated or non-unique articles | Search a distinctive sentence and see how many other domains carry it |
| Templated design | Usually poorly designed, template-based layouts | Compare the layout with sister sites; one template across many domains points to a network |
How much programmatic spend has gone to MFA sites?
The headline numbers come from the ANA's Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study, which examined the log-level data of 21 major advertisers (opens in a new tab). When the trade groups published the MFA definition in September 2023, the ANA said (opens in a new tab) MFA sites made up 21 percent of impressions and 15 percent of ad spend in that study.
The ANA then built a recurring benchmark with TAG TrustNet. Its December 2024 release (opens in a new tab) reported MFA spend falling to 6.2 percent among participating marketers. The Q1 2026 release (opens in a new tab) of May 27, 2026, the latest public edition, reported MFA exposure of 1.1 percent, up from between 0.4 and 0.6 percent throughout 2025, and named AI slop as an emerging MFA subtype that needs ongoing mitigation.
| Measure | 2023 study | 2024 benchmark | Q1 2026 benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| MFA share of spend | 15 percent, average | 6.2 percent, average | 1.1 percent, reported as MFA exposure |
| Median MFA share of spend | 10 percent | 1.1 percent | Not given in the release |
| MFA share of impressions | 21 percent | Not given in the release | Not given in the release |
Why do MFA sites look fine in campaign reports?
MFA inventory is hard to spot from a dashboard because it scores well on the metrics buyers watch. The trade groups' announcement, as published by the 4A's (opens in a new tab), states that MFA websites exhibit high measurability rates, good viewability rates, low levels of invalid traffic, and usually brand-safe environments.
The reasons are structural. Ad slots that refresh while the visitor scrolls can produce several viewable impressions per visit. Traffic bought from real people through recommendation widgets is not invalid traffic in the technical sense. Generic listicle content may contain nothing a keyword blocklist catches. So a campaign can hit its viewability target, pass its fraud filter and avoid unsafe content while its impressions sit on pages nobody chose to read. That is why MFA review belongs in planning, not in reporting after the money is spent.
How do buyers spot an MFA site before it reaches the plan?
A practical MFA review looks at four things: the page, the traffic, the content and the selling path. None of these checks needs special tools.
A six step MFA review for one candidate site
- Open three to five recent articles on a phone and on a desktop. Note how much of the first screen is advertising.
- Watch the ad slots for a minute. Slots that reload on a timer, video that plays without a click and stories split across many slideshow pages are the patterns the trade groups describe.
- Look for bought traffic. Sponsored link units on other sites that point to the candidate, and recommendation boxes that send visitors straight back out, suggest a site that buys attention to resell it.
- Read the content as a reader would. Ask whether the articles say anything specific, carry a date, and appear word for word on other domains.
- Check who sells the inventory. The site's ads.txt file (opens in a new tab) lists the companies it authorizes to sell its ad space, and each exchange's sellers.json file (opens in a new tab) says whether an account belongs to the publisher or to an intermediary. Many resellers and no direct path deserve a closer look.
- Confirm a real audience in your market. Public data such as the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) shows whether real Chrome users visit a site in a given country.
What should an MFA checklist for a site list include?
Use this checklist whenever a site list is built, reused for a new flight or handed over from another team.
Pre-flight MFA checklist for an inclusion list
- Every site is a publisher with its own editorial content, not a store, a brand site or a page of links.
- Sampled articles were reviewed on mobile and desktop, not judged from a homepage alone.
- No site comes close to the 30 percent desktop ad-to-content example the trade groups give.
- No site depends on auto-refreshing slots, forced slideshows or autoplay video.
- Sites that appear to rely on sponsored link units for traffic were flagged.
- Sites sharing the same ad or analytics account IDs were reviewed as one network.
- Each site's ads.txt and matching sellers.json entries were checked and recorded.
- The list records why each site is on it and when it was last checked.
What does an MFA review look like on a real brief?
Fictional example
A Canadian home renovation brief
A fictional Toronto retailer of kitchen cabinets asks its agency for an English-language display plan in Ontario and British Columbia, beside renovation guides and home design stories. The planner starts with 40 candidate sites from keyword research and a previous campaign's list.
Four sites drop out at once as online stores rather than publishers. Five more look relevant from their homepages but fail the page review: every article is a long slideshow, ads cover most of the phone screen, and the side rail carries sponsored links to sites built on the same template.
The remaining sites go through the supply check. A home design magazine sold directly through four exchanges, with a visible Canadian audience, moves to the top. A small renovation blog has no ads.txt file, so the planner sets it aside for a manual review instead of dropping it. The final list holds 22 sites, each with a one line reason.
How does PlacementGraph keep MFA sites off a plan?
In PlacementGraph, each candidate is checked for made-for-ads risk and page quality before it reaches the list.
Should a buyer exclude every site that shows one MFA signal?
No. Each characteristic on its own also describes some legitimate publishers. Some independent sites use off-the-shelf templates, some local news sites run heavy ad loads, and wire stories appear on respectable domains. That is why the trade groups framed MFA as a combination of traits.
The ANA's guidance is that each advertiser should decide independently whether MFA sites fit its brand suitability standards, and how much MFA inventory it will accept. Write that policy down: which signals exclude a site outright, which only trigger a review, and who makes the call.
Frequently asked questions
Is an MFA site the same as ad fraud?
No. Ad fraud, or invalid traffic, covers impressions never seen by a real person. MFA impressions can be served to real people who arrived through a paid link. The problem is the business model: the site exists to resell attention at a margin, so the ads deliver little value even when every impression is valid.
What does made for arbitrage mean?
It is another name for the same thing. The 4A's uses made for arbitrage because the site profits from the spread between the cost of a visit and the revenue from the ads shown during it.
Can a private marketplace or curated deal include MFA sites?
Yes. A deal is only as clean as the domain list behind it. A private marketplace built from a broad category or a seller's package can carry MFA domains unless the list was reviewed before the deal was created.
Is AI generated content a sign of an MFA site?
Not on its own. The ANA's Q1 2026 benchmark named AI slop as an emerging MFA subtype, but the trade groups define MFA by the business model: bought traffic, heavy refreshing ad loads and generic content together. A site that publishes mass produced articles and buys its visitors fits that pattern; a newsroom that uses AI tools for drafts does not.
Sources
- Leading Trade Groups Define “Made For Advertising” Websites (opens in a new tab)ANA (Association of National Advertisers), September 26, 2023
- Leading trade groups define made for advertising websites (opens in a new tab)4A's (American Association of Advertising Agencies), September 26, 2023
- Programmatic Transparency (opens in a new tab)ANA Media Practice
- ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark Reveals Widening Gap Between Top and Bottom Advertisers (Q1 2026) (opens in a new tab)ANA, May 27, 2026
- ANA Releases 2024 Programmatic Benchmark Study (opens in a new tab)ANA, December 12, 2024
- ads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers) (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab
- sellers.json (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab
- Chrome UX Report (CrUX) documentation (opens in a new tab)Google Chrome for Developers
Researched and written by PlacementGraph Research. Read how we research, source and update these pages. Corrections: diana@placementgraph.com.