MFAs, begone.
The Yahoo DSP team has published a blog post about its work with the USAA, a top financial services company for the military, veterans, and their families. Yahoo DSP and Scope3 basically teamed up to cut made-for-advertising (MFA) sites from their buys to boost the environmental efficiency of the USAA’s digital advertising.
According to the blog post, in April 2024, when the work was done, “By optimizing away from carbon-intensive publishers and MFA sites,” USAA saw “an 11% reduction in total emissions, with a 14% decrease in distribution and storage emissions and a 6% reduction in consumer use emissions.”
Why This Matters:
In recent years, MFA websites—designed solely to maximize ad revenue—have become especially prominent. These sites often feature crappy content, clickbait headlines, and are stuffed with ads, leading to a poor user experience while shallowly delivering ad impressions and clicks. In reality, the metrics are hollow and, in some cases, driven by fraud. Making things even more complicated, of course, is the rise of Gen AI, which has made it cheaper and easier to build MFA sites and full-fledged MFA content farms, which waste ad budgets and skew performance. (See this Mediavine story from last week.)
However, there’s good news: the prevalence of MFA sites seems to be decreasing. While DoubleVerify reported MFA inventory grew 19% year-over-year in 2023, lots of effort has been made by the adtech industry to reduce their impact. As a result, the industry has, according to the ANA, reduced the share of media dollars spent on MFAs, dropping from 15% to 4%.
The work between the USAA, Yahoo DSP, and Scope3 is a good example of this in action. Tapping Yahoo and Scope3, the USAA cut waste by using blocklists to rid their buys of both “climate risk” and MFA sites. (Climate risk sites are high-emitting, low-performing media, and MFA sites very much qualify since they emit 26% more carbon than non-MFAs.) USAA also redirected budgets towards Scope3-powered Green Media Products (GMPs) in the Yahoo DSP. These are low-carbon PMP deals that help decarbonize programmatic by prioritizing low-emission curated supply, avoiding any inventory deemed climate risk.
Experts React:
“We see a ton of sustainability questions on RFIs, but very little action is ever taken during campaign planning and activation,” said Yahoo DSP’s Joshua John, while pointing to the USAA work as an example of a brand and its partners taking concrete steps to bring down emissions during their ad-buying. “Looking forward to seeing more advertisers measure and act on carbon insights in their media plans,” he added.
Why This Matters:
MFAs remain a thorny, persistent issue, and the tools to develop these sites are becoming cheaper to access and better technologically. Attacking the problem on all fronts—including perpetually updated blocklists, buying from an inclusion list only, and third-party verification advancements—will be key to keeping the numbers down. Incorporating sustainability into that multi-pronged approach is crucial.
USAA’s work, in collaboration with their DSP Yahoo and Scope3, is a good example of how green-focused efforts can be effective. This case study highlights more than just altruistic ESG goals. According to the blog, “USAA saw increased cost efficiencies, with a 17% reduction in eCPMs and a 22% reduction in cost per site visit (CPSV).” (This is inline with some other studies we’ve seen.)
While sustainability and ESG have been somewhat minimized over the last year, tethering sustainability to financial performance will be key to getting advertisers onboard, and making sure they continue to decarbonize and cut MFAs from their supply chain and campaigns.
