Let me know that I've done wrong
When I've known this all along…
I'll keep you my dirty little secret
- Dirty Little Secret, The All-American Rejects
What are Made for Ads (MFA) sites?
MFA sites generally have very little to no useful content and yet display a large number of pay-per-click (PPC) ads targeted at specific keywords. Large domain portfolio owners make large amounts of money when PPC ads are clicked on the sites they manage.
Do MFA sites provide valuable traffic to advertisers?
No, although there are a few exceptions – most MFA sites do not provide quality ad traffic or conversions for advertisers. The Click Fraud Index for Q2-2007 reported that the overall click fraud rate for content networks was 25.6% - primarily due to MFA site activity.
If MFA sites do not provide valuable traffic to advertisers, why do MFA sites still exist?
Google and Yahoo generate large amounts of revenue from MFA ad click activity. In the past, Google has tried to retain their MFA ad click revenue by introducing a “smart pricing” approach (it was smart for Google’s revenues, bad for advertiser ROI) and offering an AdSense for Domains service to large domain portfolio owners.
Yahoo’s publisher network recently introduced “quality-based pricing”. With the recent termination of so many Google Adsense accounts, this could be a “smart” move for Yahoo's revenues but it will negatively impact advertiser ROI.
Many online advertisers have responded to Google and Yahoo’s actions by opting out of the content network or reducing their spend in the content networks due to low quality ad click traffic and click fraud. Several advertisers have even moved their content network budgets to premium content networks like Quigo.
The larger issue is that MFA sites also plague the search networks.
In May, Google responded to advertiser complaints by sending termination notices to a large number of Made for Ads (MFA) sites which consistently provided low quality ad traffic and zero conversions (May 2007). On June 1, 2007, a large number of these MFA sites were terminated from the Google AdSense program.
Unfortunately, these actions did not even make a small dent in the problem.
Although Google has provided unlimited site exclusion list functionality to advertisers in order to mitigate and eliminate poorly performing sites, there has never been detailed reporting available from Google which enabled advertisers to see the exact sites on the Google content network where their ads were appearing.
In a response for greater transparency, Google recently released their Placement Performance reports for the content networks “which enables advertisers to see the exact sites on the Google content network where their ads appear. Placement Performance reports also provide site-by-site performance metrics – including domain, URL, impression, click, conversion and cost data – as well as aggregated metrics for traffic generated from AdSense for domain sites.”
But, the Placement Performance reports only address the content network and do not address the search network. Since MFA's and parked domains are prevalent in the search network and a large amount of ad dollars are being spent in the search network, why isn't there a placement performance report for the search network too?
Although these new reports provide more transparency, the Placement Performance reports are not integrated with the site exclusion functionality and are difficult to use and maintain. Also, the Google site exclusion tool only applies to campaigns that are running on the
content network. Why doesn't Google make an obvious and easy way to
also exclude sites from its search network? Coincidentally, the placement performance reports can only be run back to June 1, 2007 – the date Google terminated some of the worst performing MFA sites.
Kevin Embree
SVP, Product Strategy
Click Forensics, Inc.