The Ozone View leads every issue of The Pivot, our publisher newsletter. In a nutshell, it’s our take on industry developments and opinions from across digital media, from publisher strategies to innovations from ad tech.
The debate about made for advertising (MFA) websites has grown this year. In the US, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) published this study to keep the issue top of mind. The report claims many advertisers continue to appear on MFA sites and a long tail of non-premium sites designed to game optimisation metrics.
It’s an important debate to continue. It determines where ad spend appears and highlights the need to clearly differentiate premium, editorially-led publications that rely on advertising to fund their journalism from MFA sites.
In this AdExhanger op-ed, independent digital specialist Alessandro De Zanche argues publishers can build upon the growing anti-MFA sentiment across the industry by reinforcing their audience-centric, built-for-reader credentials.
Our view
Reflecting on the business models of premium publisher and MFA sites, Allesandro says the clear point of differentiation – the first-party web – will benefit publishers. Part of the solution, he says, will be driven by how publishers measure site performance and benchmark themselves against MFA sites. While measurement solutions like Ipsos Iris are able to do this, a clearer definition of MFA sites and of premium, made-for-reader sites is needed.
Following the release of the ANA study, a 4A's taskforce was set-up by trade bodies in the US – including ISBA from the UK – to create a definition for MFA sites, including: high ad-to-content ratio; rapidly auto-refreshing ad placements; high percentage of paid traffic sourcing; generic non-editorial controlled, low quality content; and unusually poor designed and templated websites.
The IAB also published its own MFA definitions in the summer, while market intelligence company Jounce Media also discussed the furore around MFA in its August report. Whichever way you look at it, this issue is not black and white.
What’s missing here is the publisher view. To attract ad spend, publishers are forced to game the same metrics as MFA sites to maintain share of revenue. Publishers don’t want cluttered sites with low quality UX, but they are clearly not rewarded for cleaning up their sites.
This shouldn’t all be on the publisher. Advertisers need to reset their campaign benchmarks to better reflect the reality of reading premium websites. As an example, 90% VTR for outstream video can only be achieved on MFA sites.
Ultimately, advertisers and publishers need to collaborate to ensure ad spend moves to the premium web so we can create better outcomes for all.
