Ad industry’s most influential trade organizations have come together to spell out new definitions for ‘made for advertising’ websites, which are designed solely to attract an influx of ad dollars and gobble up a significant portion of digital ad spends.

The consortium, which includes the Association of National Advertisers (ANA, US), the World Federation of Advertisers and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, this week released a detailed definition of “Made for Advertising” websites which lack organic audience and are instead highly dependent on visits sourced from clickbait ads that run on social networks and websites of reputable publishers.

These sites generate a whopping 21 percent of ad impressions and gobble up 15 percent ($13 billion) of digital ad spend of the Open Web Programmatic which is a $88 billion global market, the ANA said in a report released early this year. The report blamed data gaps, lack of ad viewability and a huge number of publishers (44,000 websites, mostly created for ads) for the massive ad-waste.

The move has come at a time when marketers are increasingly facing pressure to justify their ad spending, reduce wastage and deliver ROI.

“Advertisers are often not in control of their media placement decisions as much as they should be,” says an Indian CMO, adding that programmatic players should weed out such publishers.

While Google commands a significant portion of programmatic advertising, marketers are increasingly allocating more budgets for Open Web programmatic advertising to reduce their dependence on Google.

According to a densu report, programmatic contributes 42% of digital ad spends in India which corresponds to Rs 12,000 Cr.

MFA sites impact ad rates: Indian Publishers

Indian marketers expressed concerns over the extent to which MFA sites have grown and impacting their ad dollars.

Such websites affect genuine publishers as well, industry players say. “Excess supply of inventory created through such websites impacts ad rates. In India digital ad rates have either remained static or have declined since 1995. The same is not true for US and other markets,” says Pradeep Gairola, Digital Head of The Hindu.

Abhishek Karnani, Vice President of International Advertising Association (India chapter) and Director, The Free Press Journal Group of Newspapers, echoes the sentiments. “It is surely a cause of concern as it eats into the genuine publishers’ share in ad revenue. I am glad that the issue is coming to the forefront and being discussed,” says Karnani.

He added that Google is making its robot and crawlers smarter to wean these types of websites by regularly posting updates on the algorithm.

How to spot MFAs

As per trade organizations, MFA sites usually exhibit a combination of the following five characteristics:

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