AdLib Media Group partnered with Jounce Media to enhance programmatic advertising by automatically blocking low-quality MFA sites.
The MFA site traffic craze was a hot topic in ad tech last year. Many questioned: are all MFA sites bad? What exactly distinguishes what an MFA site is? At the time of the craze, MFA sites made up 15% of global programmatic ad spend, but agencies were working to combat them, much like AdLib and Jounce, and are working on them now.
In a strategic move to enhance the quality and effectiveness of programmatic advertising, AdLib Media Group has announced a partnership with Jounce Media by integrating its MFA detection technology.
In an effort to guarantee that advertisers focus their media investments on premium publishers to drive real consumer engagement, AdLib is providing agencies with tools to optimize their digital ad spend by connecting Jounce Media’s advanced MFA detection technology to automatically block low-quality traffic.
“MFA websites are a growing threat to advertiser success. By integrating Jounce Media’s technology, we can safeguard client campaigns against wasted media investment,” said Mike Hauptman,founder and CEO of AdLib..
Jounce Media President Chris Kane echoed this sentiment. If the industry proactively blocks low-quality traffic, it ensures that media investments go toward genuine publishers that influence consumer purchase decisions.
Mike Hauptman: The Future of Programmatic Advertising 
Andrew Byrd: Why did AdLib partner with Jounce Media specifically to block MFA traffic? What stood out about their solution?
Mike Hauptman: We partnered with Jounce Media because their approach to detecting and blocking MFA traffic is both innovative and reliable.
What really stood out to us was their ability to dynamically identify and classify MFA sites, ensuring that we’re always one step ahead of the curve.
They don’t just rely on static lists—they continuously update and refine their detection methods, which is crucial given how quickly MFA sites can evolve. This level of precision and their commitment to transparency made them the perfect fit for AdLib, where our goal is to deliver the highest quality media experiences for our clients.
AB: How does this partnership align with AdLib’s broader mission and strategy within the programmatic advertising space?
MH: This partnership is a natural extension of our mission to make premium programmatic advertising accessible to all agencies, regardless of size. Our strategy has always been about reducing complexity and increasing transparency in the ad buying process.
By integrating Jounce Media’s technology, we’re ensuring that our clients can trust the inventory quality they’re purchasing. It’s about removing the guesswork and inefficiencies that have long plagued programmatic, particularly for mid-market agencies that don’t have the resources to tackle these issues on their own.
AB: What impact do you expect this partnership to have on your client’s campaign performance and overall media investment?
MH: The impact is going to be significant. By automatically blocking MFA traffic, our clients will see a reduction in wasted ad spend and an improvement in campaign performance. MFA sites are notorious for inflating metrics without delivering real value, so by eliminating them, we’re ensuring that our clients’ budgets are directed toward high-quality, impactful placements. This not only boosts performance metrics like engagement and conversion rates but also enhances brand safety and reputation.
AB: How do you plan to further enhance AdLib’s DSP platform with similar integrations in the future?
MH: We’re always looking for ways to bring best-in-class tools and technologies to our platform. The Jounce partnership is just the beginning. Moving forward, we plan to integrate additional solutions that address other pain points in the programmatic space. Our focus is on building a platform that’s not only powerful but also easy to use, so our clients can focus on strategy and creativity rather than the technicalities of media buying.
AB: What steps will AdLib take to educate and onboard clients about this new feature and ensure they fully leverage its benefits?
MH: The beauty of this integration is that it’s completely turnkey and automatically enabled for all AdLib clients at no additional cost. There’s no setup required—clients will immediately benefit from enhanced ad quality without lifting a finger. We’ll also provide insights through the platform to highlight the positive impact on their campaigns.
AB: Are there any initial testing results to share after Jounce integrated its MFA detection tech into your DSP?
MH: While we’re still in the early stages of gathering comprehensive data, the initial results from our beta testing have been very promising. We’ve already seen a noticeable decrease in MFA traffic, leading to a more efficient ad spend allocation and improved campaign outcomes. We’re excited to share more detailed results as we collect data.
Chris Kane: Accelerating the Shift Toward Premium Supply 
AB: We’ve discussed the MFA problem. What is the current state of Made for Advertising sites from your perspective? Has the ad tech industry gotten better at eliminating MFAs?
Chris Kane: Because MFA publishers are highly dependent on paid traffic, the availability of MFA supply is extremely responsive to buyer behavior. As buyers spend more on MFA inventory, those publishers can afford to buy more paid traffic. And as buyers pull back their spending on MFA sites, those publishers can no longer profitably buy traffic.
The result was a giant run-up in the availability of MFA supply from 2020 through mid-2023, peaking at 30% of all web auctions. But as marketers have implemented MFA blocking solutions, MFA has contracted to less than 10% of web auctions. Still, MFA is a very large share of available supply, and buyers need to actively manage whether they participate in MFA auctions.
AB: Please remind us how Jounce Media developed the technology to accurately identify and block MFA sites. Can you walk us through the process?
CK: We post our criteria for classifying inventory as MFA here. We perform a battery of tests every day on every RTB-traded website to quantify whether each domain meets our criteria for MFA classification. Based on that daily-updating process, we regularly add and remove sites from our MFA list, and AdLib will now similarly continuously modify their default exclusion list to block new sources of MFA supply and re-enable bidding on sites that have retooled their operations to create a premium advertising experience.
AB: How does Jounce Media differentiate between MFA sites and legitimate publishers that might have similar characteristics?
CK: In addition to the process described above, we publish our complete MFA list to all of our clients via dashboards and data feeds on a daily-updating cadence. There are over 3,000 advertising professionals from over 100 companies that have direct access to our data, making our MFA list far more transparent and far more pressure tested than any other solution in the market.
AB: In your opinion, how will this partnership with AdLib impact the broader industry’s approach to MFA supply?
CK: In addition to benefiting their clients, AdLib’s decision to block MFA supply by default will accelerate an industry-wide shift toward premium supply. SSPs feed DSPs what they eat.
When buyers shift their spending patterns away from MFA supply toward premium publishers, SSPs reshape the mix of ad opportunities that they make available to DSPs. Premium publishers are more available in the bidstream today than they were last summer, and AdLib’s decision to block MFA will accelerate this trend.
AB: What are the next steps for Jounce Media to improve and expand its technology to identify low-quality traffic?
CK: We are continuously researching new sources of supply chain inefficiency and new opportunities to deploy RTB investments more effectively. Among other topics, we are currently studying the landscape of in-stream video, benchmarks on ad density, and the accuracy of user targeting signals.
AB: Can you share any initial testing results after integrating your MFA detection tech into AdLib’s DSP?
CK: In July 2023, MFA bid request volume was at 30% but has since decreased to 10%. Through their partnership, AdLib and Jounce are committed to implementing best practices to reduce this percentage further.