Index Exchange has called for the industry to step up to eradicate made-for-advertising (MFA) sites, designed solely to capture ad revenue through minimal effort and low-quality content.
Regional managing director, APAC at Index Exchange, Adele Wieser, told Mediaweek that the industry can no longer allow for MFA sites.
“We see there is an immense amount of value that can be generated for an advertiser through the programmatic ecosystem as well as across the open web. We want to sustain that,” she said.
“The industry needs to ensure that we are getting very forceful in our position around items like MFA, where they are actually leeching money from our core media in not only the Australian market but all markets.
“We can’t let it sustain because it’s going to be detrimental to the industry at large.”
Index Exchange is an advertising marketplace that helps marketers reach consumers on the open web, through any ad format.
Over the last two years, Index Exchange has undertaken a thorough audit of its exchange, scrutinising every domain and cutting ties with publishers that didn’t meet expectations of quality.
Wieser said this process was long and intentional in the way it was approached.
“We had to ensure that everything we were looking to remove from the Exchange was correctly vetted and validated to ensure that it was clearly MFA versus smaller content sites.”
While the exchange doesn’t outwardly publicise what its criteria is to be classed as an MFA site, Wieser assures that the “process of review and appeal with clients is very thorough and meticulous.”
A world in which MFA sites are completely eradicated isn’t off the table, but Wieser stresses it’s impossible without collaboration.
“In saying this, it’s the internet, we’ve never really been properly able to stomp out any major issues.
“Nefarious actors will continue to evolve their businesses, and we need to evolve at the same pace, if not slightly ahead of them in order to capture it before it becomes a bigger problem moving forward.
“Looking at advertisers, they have this level of vigilance around where the money is going, and how much return that is generating off the back of investment.
“We want to continue to demonstrate the exceptional value that programmatic can deliver for these partners.”