MFA exposure reporting | Pixalate Docs

The MFA Domains report in the Pixalate Analytics dashboard shows your web traffic by made-for-advertising (MFA) risk level and by the factors behind the rating. Use it to see how much of your traffic is on MFA websites, find the worst sites and the supply sources behind them, and act: block supply, work with the publisher, or shift spend to sites with low MFA risk.

The MFA reports are available to all Analytics dashboard subscribers as a beta program.

For how Pixalate rates MFA risk and what each factor means, see MFA methodology and definitions. For an overview of Pixalate’s MFA products, see Made for Advertising (MFA).

What the report shows

MFA report tiles — The MFA Domain Traffic report's summary tiles.

Your traffic by MFA risk level: low, medium or high.
The MFA factors that make up the rating, such as ad density, ad refresh rate, paid traffic and social traffic. You can use them one at a time or together.
Any other Analytics metric, such as IVT, alongside the MFA data.

All the usual report tools work here: date ranges, filters, Add Column, save, schedule and export. See Run and customize reports.

Check your current exposure

Open the MFA Domains report with its default columns. It shows your total traffic with the number of MFA impressions and your MFA traffic rate, day by day.

If MFA traffic spikes, the day-by-day view shows when it started, so you can check whether new supply was added at that time.

Find the worst sites

MFA report columns — The MFA report's columns: MFA risk and the signals behind it.

Sort the table to bring outliers to the top:

By MFA risk, high to low: gives you the sites with the most MFA risk. If you’re concerned about traffic bought from social or paid sources, sort by those columns too. For the worst sites, decide whether to block the site or the publisher, or work with the supply source to drop certain traffic sources.
By ad density and ad refresh rate: shows the sites with the most aggressive ad placements, which hurt user experience. Take this data to the seller or publisher to reduce ad placement activity, or block the site if the problem continues. If your partnership has an ad refresh limit, this data can support a clawback. See Clawback report.

Combine MFA dimensions and metrics with thresholds to get a custom list of domains to act on. For example, filter to medium MFA risk and an ad density greater than 3. Because this is post-bid data from your own traffic, it gives you a more nuanced way to block than a list alone.

Then add other metrics:

IVT types: check whether MFA behavior overlaps with invalid traffic. For example, a site with high ad density, a high ad refresh rate and display impression fraud suggests ad placement saturation and possibly background or non-viewable ads. The two won’t always be related, but signals like these can justify a clawback. See Reported IVT types.
Advertiser and campaign: flip the view to the demand side to see how your advertisers and campaigns are exposed to MFA sites. Save and schedule a separate report for each partnership, especially when buyers have different MFA risk thresholds.

Break down by seller or publisher

By seller. Filter to one seller to see the overall MFA health of that supply source. Instead of blocking the seller outright, use the data to note the sites that don’t meet your expectations. Export the report to show which sites are high MFA risk and which impressions are billable, citing specific data points such as a site’s ad refresh rate.

By publisher. A single publisher can own a very large number of sites, which makes them hard to monitor one by one. Add Publisher ID to evaluate all the inventory under a publisher at once. With a direct partnership, use the data to stop buying certain sites, or block the publisher if most of its inventory is high MFA risk. You can also compare two publishers or sellers side by side and move spend to the one that meets your quality expectations.

Block MFA traffic pre-bid

To block websites, mobile apps or CTV apps rated medium or high MFA risk before you bid, use the MFA data feeds. To check how well a feed is applied to your traffic, see Data feed overlap reports.

Questions? Contact support@pixalate.com.