Digital black hole: MFA sites are quietly eating away 30% of India’s programmatic ad spends

New Delhi: Being a digital wanderer, you must have come across a beauty brand’s ad nestled between clickbait headlines and page-3 gossip. Or a financial service campaign flashing on a site riddled with zero editorial integrity. 

While this may feel like a glitch, chances are, these campaigns are there by design. Yes. And it might be where a significant chunk of India’s digital ad budgets are quietly disappearing. 

While Indian marketers are pouring crores into data-driven campaigns aimed at targeting the right people, the ads are appearing in the wrong places. By wrong, it doesn’t just mean irrelevant. It means Made-for-advertising sites (MFA). These are low-effort, high-ad-load webpages engineered to milk impressions, clicks, and CPMs without offering any real audience value. 

Basically, it is the digital version of throwing a party for your beloved beings and hosting it in a shady parking lot. Enabled by opaque supply chains and rubber-stamp success metrics like CTR and viewability, these MFA sites continue to absorb legitimate brand budgets. 

Dude, where’s my ad?

Mayank Shah, Vice President, Parle Products, shared an anecdote describing how MFA still haunts marketers' dreams.

“About one and a half months ago, we conducted a programmatic ad campaign audit. What surprised us was that, despite providing a sharply defined target group, both psychographically and demographically, our ads still showed up alongside content that was irrelevant, and in some cases, not even brand safe. That was quite disturbing.” 

He further told BestMediaInfo.com, “Even though we apply filters to avoid unsafe or unsuitable content, it still happens. No matter how careful you are, some of your advertising will inevitably end up on suboptimal inventory. That’s the limitation of where we stand currently as an industry.” 

When asked if marketers personally audit where their ads are being shown, Aradhika Mehta, Head of Marketing, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, said, “This is a regular exercise. With trust being eroded thanks to some past campaigns' delivery issues, one is consistently auditing the campaigns.” 

She shared that it comes as a “huge surprise to discover the low accountability and ownership in this entire gamut and that well-established media platforms are not delivering the ad to the required audiences.” 

The silent saboteurs

When quantified, these slip-ups pertaining to MFAs can range anywhere from 10% to 30%. Amit Relan, Co-founder and CEO, mFilterIT, shared that their analysis revealed that 7-12% of ad placements ended up in the MFA ditch. 

Zooming in on MFAs, he explained that on MFA sites, publishers deliver fake clicks from bots, ads in 0X0 pixels, which are so small that they are not visible to humans and ad stacking (ads being placed on top of each other), just to boost engagement. 

“This ends up draining advertisers' media spending and adversely impacts ROI,” Relan said. 

ReBid’s founder and CEO, Rajiv Dhingra, revealed that as per their audits, 15-30% of programmatic budgets, factoring in the DSPs and filters used, still land on low-quality inventory or MFA domains. Dhingra said, “That’s real money being wasted under the guise of 'targeted' advertising.” 

Vikas Khanchandani, Strategic Advisor, MiQ, calls the slippage of MFA sites and low-quality inventory a huge challenge. 

“While many brands and agencies use partners like IAS or MOAT to overcome this problem, reports identifying MFAs and other inefficiencies are shared post-delivery, which limits their effectiveness. Consequently, brands don't enjoy foreknowledge, which impacts campaign objectives and deliveries, lowering KPIs,” Khanchandani told BestMediaInfo.com. 

He also shared that nearly 25% of open web programmatic campaigns are deemed wasteful or unproductive, and half of this waste is attributed to poor consumer visibility and quality concerns. 

Supply Path Optimisation – Buzzword or real fix?

Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) has long been floated as the industry’s great equaliser. It is touted as an effective way to trim the fat from programmatic supply chains. But the reality is biting. 

SPO, in its ideal form, as Relan from mFilterIt explained, is about cleaning up the supply chain. It is the act of removing intermediaries and improving transparency around where and how inventory is sourced.  

However, in practice, especially in India, SPO is “dominantly driven by the pricing and margin play, not by content quality or brand safety. In that sense, it can be more performative than truly functional.” 

Chiming in, Dhingra from ReBid said, “In India, SPO is still in its infancy and often more performative than truly strategic. While the global conversation around SPO has evolved, Indian media buyers rarely dig into the supply path details to differentiate between efficient, direct supply and bloated reseller chains.” 

Highlighting the grave consequences of going down the wrong path, Khanchandani from MiQ explained that an average domain has more than 146 supply paths. Since the path goes through excessive intermediaries, the wrong supply path selection can lead to a brand paying a 198% higher premium for the desired inventories. 

Hence, Khanchandani suggested, “Brands that want to optimise their spending must ask programmatic partners about their experience and prowess with supply path optimisation in this area.”

The reality of the matter, as experts suggested, is this: SPO requires both technical sophistication and a willingness to optimise beyond surface-level metrics. Unless advertisers push for transparency and agencies are incentivised to reduce hops and optimise the cost-to-quality ratio, SPO will remain under-leveraged. 

Apps vs websites: Same, same but different. 

Giving us a bird’s eye view of the application ecosystem, in contrast to the website world, Tanmay Swarup, Growth Director, Moloco, explained that in today’s age, when the Indian app industry “has reached an advanced stage of digital maturity”, it is not enough for an ad to simply be seen or clicked. Apart from a few specific cases, just an ‘install’ is also not enough. 

“Marketers now need to assess the complete unit economics from a ROAS lens. Your ad spends need to garner positive ROAS results as per your time cohorts and then thereafter translate to a long-term healthy user mix for the brand (one that positively contributes to the overall user LTV - Lifetime value -  and reduces user breakeven timelines), as this represents the best user base,” Swarup told BestMediaInfo.com.

Swarup advocated for machine learning as the solution to solving the inefficiencies of the supply path and traditional programmatic buying at large. 

Conveying his thoughts on the subject, Swarup said, “This is prima facie the biggest use case and the edge of machine learning, i.e., Algorithmic Supply Path Optimisation. It optimises and continuously improves in tandem for 3 different pillars – data-driven path selection, operational machine learning and cost-efficiency – and a truly ML-driven platform will always relay, with utmost transparency, every single log level data.”

Are brands chasing the right metrics? 

For years, Indian advertisers have relied on CTRs and viewability as the gospel of digital performance. But as ads land on the wrong screens, and sometimes with robotic audiences, cracks in these metrics are becoming too large to ignore. 

But as experts weigh in, it seems that while the winds are shifting, they are yet to turn over the leaf. 

In Khanchandani’s experience, clients are becoming more interested in attention-based metrics today, but their adoption is still in its nascent stage, especially in India, which is a video-heavy market.  

“Most Indian marketers continue to prioritise increasing reach across video inventory, with YouTube being the most popular choice since it’s the only streaming platform that enjoys an MRC accreditation. YouTube’s strong brand safety credentials make it the default choice for many marketers,” he said. 

Dhingra is seeing early signs of interest for attention-based metrics, especially from performance-savvy marketers and D2C brands. “But for the most part, attention metrics are still not mainstream in Indian media planning. Traditional KPIs like CTR and viewability are deeply entrenched because they’re easy to report, benchmark, and optimise,” he noted. 

Mehta from Aditya Birla offered a candid view from the brand side. She conveyed that due to the bombardment of myriad metrics, “traditional metrics are no longer the sole evaluation criteria.” There is “equal focus” on engagement as well as business metrics. However, Mehta noted, attention metrics are still not a big consideration factor. 

Shah from Parle weighed in with a unique situation. Shah shared that while they request metrics like attention, pushing media partners solicit a curveball reply from them. “The solution they offer is to pick the platforms by ourselves. At that point, it is not really programmatic anymore. It is direct buying in disguise,” Shah said. 

To counter this, Parle has started working with a few platforms directly. Shah explained, “By working directly with them, we can better control where our ads appear and the kind of content they are placed alongside. We're also present on OTT platforms, which generally offer a more brand-safe environment. This gives us a better balance of scale and safety.”  

Offering a nuanced take, Relan revealed, “Attention-based metrics are growing in the limelight, and adoption continues as the starting point for validation. The point to be noted is that both metrics – viewability and advanced attention – deliver ad analytics and give very little room for optimisation.” 

He further said that both metrics can be delivered even with bots. Bots can be programmed, and specific viewability and attention metrics can be delivered. According to Relan, even if attention metrics are used to delve deeper into engagement, it still does not say whether the engagement was bot-driven or human-driven. 

New media, old problems

As retail media and Connected TV (CTV) platforms rise, many assume cleaner inventory is a given. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

“Legacy assumptions – like these platforms being ‘premium’ – can pose serious challenges. We still need robust AI to analyse content frame-by-frame. Brand misplacements can happen on these platforms, too. An ad for a luxury product may appear next to inappropriate user-generated content,” Relan warned.

According to Dhingra, retail media’s closed ecosystems often make third-party brand safety audits harder. And in CTV, server-side ad insertions obscure actual impression delivery.

“Advertisers need to demand greater transparency and treat retail and CTV buys not as 'add-ons' but as core parts of their digital mix, with the same rigour applied to brand safety and media quality,” he added. 

Khanchandani sees promise. “Global partnerships between OTT platforms and supply partners are improving programmatic CTV via cleaner PMPs. But the key is treating CTV as a unified ecosystem and not a splintered mess of walled gardens,” he said. 

Readily available remedies

If the problem is widespread, the solutions aren’t exactly hidden either. From domain exclusion lists to pre-bid filters and private marketplaces (PMPs), there’s a toolkit readily available to help brands steer clear of MFA inventory. The trouble, however, lies in activation. And, of course, intent.

Dhingra, laying it bare, said, “There are several safeguards available – domain exclusion lists, pre-bid brand safety integrations, supply path curation, and PMPs. However, in India, many of these safeguards are not activated by default. The responsibility often lies with the agency or the trader operating the DSP to configure them manually.” 

In addition to this, Indian advertisers often prioritise reach and cost-efficiency over stringent inventory hygiene. This means low-cost impressions from MFA sites get favoured in performance reports focused on CTRs or CPMs, even if they deliver negligible brand value, Dhingra noted. 

Relan offered a framework that goes beyond just technical filters. “MFA safeguards include pre-bid filters, verified inventory tools, transparent supply chains, strict allowlists, contractual MFA clauses, and outcome-focused KPIs. Regular audits and industry collaboration also help keep media buying clean and effective,” he said. 

But these safeguards are only as strong as the ecosystem’s willingness to use them.

So, what now?

If there’s a single takeaway from this collective frustration, it’s that programmatic in India is long overdue for a detox.

Brands are more data savvy than ever. Yet, without deeper visibility into supply chains, true attention, and context-level placements, they’re still playing digital roulette. It’s not that brands don’t care. It’s that programmatic, as it stands today, makes it far too easy to care after the fact. 

Until auditing becomes the default and transparency the standard, and not an afterthought, advertisers may continue to hit their targets but miss the point.