MFA Indicators

HUMAN identifies MFA ("Made for Advertising" or "Made for Arbitrage") inventory based on strong/standalone indicators of MFA as well as parallel indicators associated with MFA.

Strong/standalone indicators of MFA

The following indicators cause a site to be flagged as MFA. These features strongly suggest arbitrage or an intent to mislead advertisers.

IndicatorReport nameDefinition
Path Dependent Ad Loading (Variable Ad Load, Differential Ad Load)Manual ReviewWebsites that have differences when visited directly as opposed to when visited from specific UTM parameters, referrals, or traffic sources. Path dependent ad loading occurs when there’s a material difference in rate of ad loading, ad to content ratio, page structure, or other significant differences.
Path Dependent Content Loading (High Risk)Manual ReviewPath Dependent Content Loading is a similar trait to Path Dependent Ad Loading and often overlaps with it. This occurs when a domain has a specific type of content generally on that domain when it’s visited directly; however, when it’s visited from a specific UTM, referral, or traffic source, the content on the domain is substantially different. This is classified as MFA specifically because there’s a low degree of transparency to the advertiser with regard to what they’re actually buying.
📘 Note
Path Dependent Content Loading is only used as a standalone indicator if the discrepancy in content is deemed to be a brand safety risk. For example, we don’t flag a site if it’s a car site and our top URLs are to articles about cooking, unless there’s other MFA evidence like differential ad load.
Templated SiteTemplated SiteAds are served on a page with a templated setup commonly used by known MFA domains. Templated sites also frequently serve low-effort and/or copied content.

Parallel indicators associated with MFA

A site is flagged as MFA when three or more of the following indicators are present. Each indicator shows some degree of domain arbitraging or lack of traffic transparency, so when taken together, this strongly suggests MFA.

IndicatorReport nameDefinition
High Rate of Paid SourcingHigh Paid SourcingSome proportion of traffic from paid sources, including: paid search, display ads.
High Rate of Social SourcingHigh Social SourcingSome proportion of traffic from social media sites, such as Facebook or Reddit (organic and paid). Includes direct media buying from Facebook.
High AdToContentRatio ValueHigh Ad to Content RatioHigh ratio of ad pixels to “content” pixels. This is the ratio of pixels devoted to ads to total pixels on the page, including whitespace.
High Amount of Total Ads LoadedHigh Total AdsHigh raw number of ads loaded per user page view. This is the number of ads detected during FraudSensor’s load-time.
Note that this metric is distinct from the Total Number of Ads on the Page, which might be legitimately high in some cases, such as long form articles. This metric only captures the number of ads loaded during a given FraudSensor session.
Fast Ad Refresh RateFast Ad RefreshA way to inflate ad counts by refreshing ad slots too frequently. Typically ~30 seconds is considered reasonable. Often fast ad refreshing occurs either every 5, 10, 15, or 20 seconds. This is more egregious when refreshing out of context/view.
High Degree of Page Complexity (High iframe Count)High Iframe CountLarge number of iframes present on the page. Used as a proxy count for the number of ad units.
High Degree of Page Complexity (High Ad Pixel Count)High Pixel CountLarge number of ad pixels present on the page, derived from dimensions of ad elements found on the page.
High Page Height (infinite scroll, tall page, high page complexity)High Top HeightA large number of MFA domains use infinite scroll or extremely long pages to force users to excessively scroll to view content, loading significantly more ads. This indicator identifies domains either with an infinite scroll, meaning that the page dynamically loads more content as the user scrolls down the page, or with anomalously high page height.
Inflated Page CountInflated Page CountAds served on pages with navigation patterns resembling those artificially encouraging page refreshing/ad reloading. Commonly slideshow or quiz style sites refreshing multiple ads after each slide or question but can include other forms of pagination.
Supply Chains with Elevated MFA RatesHigh MFA Supply ChainA significant portion of the shared supply chain's traffic have elevated MFA rates elsewhere. This indicates the domain or site shares infrastructure with other entities experiencing high MFA rates.