About the same time that we issued this challenge at the annual Cannes Lions Festival of Advertising, the Association of National Advertisers revealed their Programmatic Transparency Study “First Look” (I highly recommend taking a few moments to read it if you haven’t already, especially if your title is CFO). One of its key findings was the preponderance of made-for-advertising websites (MFAs) in the participants’ campaigns: The average participant saw 14% of their total programmatic investments flow to MFAs and one in five of their impressions were delivered in those environments as a result. That presents brands with an opportunity: to direct their agencies to block pernicious MFAs from their go-to-market plans and use the savings to increase their advertising investments in quality news journalism.

While there’s not yet a standard definition of MFAs that’s been widely adopted, they have common characteristics: A very high ad-to-content ratio, rapidly auto-refreshing ad placements, a high percentage of paid traffic sourcing, generic content (non-editorial, low-quality, sometimes erroneous, and occasionally plagiarised), and templated website designs that aim to stuff as many ads as possible onto a page.

In short, these sites deliver a terrible user experience with the sole goal of hoovering up as many advertiser dollars as possible in the programmatic marketplace. Many use sophisticated algorithms to determine which keywords an advertiser blocks for brand safety purposes and then employ AI to write stories that avoid those words in an effort to improve their chances of winning advertisers’ bids. The net effect is that MFAs are often beating out the very best news sites in the programmatic marketplace for brand safety reasons when in fact they are far more concerning from a brand suitability and user experience perspective.

And here’s the thing: Not one participant in the study listed a single MFA site on their approved media vendor list (often called an “inclusion list” in the advertising industry). Still, 14% of their advertising dollars were flowing directly to sites that those advertisers did not want to do business with and were unsuitable both from a quality of content and user experience perspective.

In 2022, programmatic advertising investments in the U.S. were estimated to be $127 billion, rising to $168 billion by 2024, according to Statista. If you project the ANA study findings, that would suggest that MFAs could be hauling in $17.8 billion dollars of advertisers’ money even though the vast majority of advertisers would prefer not to see their ads on these sites as they do not deliver the kind of business-driving results that premium publishers do, have dubious business practices, spread misinformation, and create subpar consumer experiences.

CEOs should ask themselves: What’s worse? Ads for your enterprise showing up in major publications next to some quality journalism that may be on an unsettling topic or seeing your ads adjacent to low-quality content which may or may not be even true in an environment where ads are popping up everywhere and from which your investments yield little business impact?

“Advertisers play a vital role to ensure that journalism remains a strong voice for truth in our society. Truth provides the brand safety umbrella that marketers require to ensure that brand messages reach their intended audience. Marketers’ support for quality journalism allows their advertising investments to flow away from unproductive MFA sites to productive platforms such as news sites and other brand-suitable environments. We must all increase our efforts to optimize media investments that enhance brand image and minimize brand safety and misinformation concerns. Moving ad dollars from MFA sites to quality news journalism platforms is one way to achieve that,” ANA CEO Bob Liodice said.

Advertising investments by marketers are the lifeblood of journalism in America–and journalism is the lifeblood of our democracy, society, and economy. It’s an ecosystem that has enabled many enterprises to thrive to levels rarely achieved outside of our country. Your company is likely one of the direct beneficiaries of that positive dynamic.

We’ve lost sight of this important and symbiotic relationship. With the advent of brand safety considerations and a culture that has become increasingly polarized, advertisers have been pulling back from the tremendous business value of advertising in news, as well as from their civic responsibility to nurture the institution of journalism. 

If we hope to bolster the vitality of newsrooms and ensure that voters on all sides of the political spectrum are well-informed at this moment in our nation’s history, we need a different kind of leadership.

Lou Paskalis is the Chief Strategy Officer at Ad Fontes Media.

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