40% of an Ecommerce Brand’s Pmax Buys Were Served on AI-spun MFA Sites and Dead Domains

The increase in AI-spun made for advertising sites is making it harder for buyers to ensure their ads show up in quality environments, especially when using AI-powered media buying tools like Google's Performance Max, according to four sources. One ecommerce brand found that, for one recent campaign, between 30% and 40% of its Pmax display and video ads were served on MFA sites, many of which feature cookie-cutter layouts and AI-generated content, according to an agency executive working on the brand. Ads were served through Google video partners—a network of third-party online video that Google says meets high-quality standards. If advertisers use Pmax, they are automatically opted into GVP. A second agency executive told ADWEEK that despite efforts to mitigate this issue, around 5% of ads still end up on MFA sites, particularly through GVP. “These sites are of extremely questionable quality to the point where some don’t even exist—you click the link, and it’s a dead domain,” said the first agency exec, who saw where these ads were served via reports from DeepSee.io and Jounce over the last few months. A 2023 Adalytics report found that up to 80% of ad placements through GVP end up on small, muted, automatically played videos positioned off to the side of a page’s main content. This contrasts with Google’s promise of premium placements with ads shown before video content, with audio on, and only charged for ads viewers don’t skip. What marketers are noticing now is that the surge in AI-generated sites that pop up overnight has exploded the amount of low-quality options their ads can wind up on. DeepSee.io saw a rise of 20,000 AI-spun sites at the start of the year to nearly 50,000 sites this week, the company told ADWEEK. “We already prohibit many practices, such as disruptive or deceptive ad-serving techniques, that are commonly associated with MFA," a Google spokesperson said. Ads served on obscure sites The ecommerce brand has been running Pmax campaigns for nearly two years. It only recently gained visibility into where its ad placements were served through third-party sites like DeepSee.io and Jounce. While the brand hasn’t reduced its Pmax spending, it’s now using these firms to identify high-quality sites, prioritizing inventory management over just targeting audiences. Ads were also served on obscure sites bundled under a vague reporting category labeled as Google-owned and operated, according to the placement report. These ads showed up on sites with names like apartments-available-23011.xyz, indicating spammy AI sites, rather than the more common .com, according to a screenshot seen by ADWEEK. The first executive noted this happening across multiple brands. In 2021, Google introduced dynamic exclusion lists, allowing advertisers to block placements based on topics like politics or specific devices such as tablets, the company said. However, this feature does not specifically target MFA sites, leaving advertisers to manually block individual sites as they appear. Advertisers can block part domains before a campaign starts, but, as the first executive noted, it’s a game of Whack-a-Mole—block some, and new ones pop up. The Google spokesperson also said that Google-owned and operated sites include platforms like Gmail, Play, Discover, and the YouTube homepage. They added that Google's behavioral policies don't allow ads to be served on low-quality or spammy content and prohibit publishers from engaging in disruptive, invasive, or deceptive ad-serving practices for the purposes of generating ad revenue. Google has provided more transparency about ad placements, such as revealing which YouTube video ads appear alongside and campaign-level negative keywords in Pmax, but three executives—who spoke on the condition of anonymity—said the quality of its inventory has not improved. Although Google made ad placement tracking data available, sifting through thousands of rows of information in Excel sheets is a heavy lift, according to the second executive. Phantom traffic for YouTube campaigns A third brand executive from an insurance portal company noted that it's become harder to work out where YouTube ads are showing up. Despite using the same campaign setup and creative, the visibility of where their YouTube ads were served in the ad-buy placement report has declined. In 2022, they could trace 72% of their ad spend, but by 2024, that figure dropped to 45%. The remaining ad spend falls into a vague other category, which the executive likened to MFA sites within YouTube's extended reach through GVP inventory. This category reflects traffic with no measurable performance—what the executive called phantom traffic. Google has offered no resolution, citing privacy concerns, the executive said. In one placement report, the third executive found that nearly 57% of the ad spend was unaccounted for, meaning it was unclear where the ads were shown. However, all conversions (clicks, sign-ups, and sales attributed to the ads) were tied to the tracked spend, indicating that the unaccounted spend did not result in any conversions. "Seems awfully convenient that 99% of conversions came from placements we could identify in the reporting," the executive said. “This does not exist in any other digital marketing media and only Google could get away with throwing the weight of being a monopolistic organization. This is not standard practice anywhere."

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40% of an Ecommerce Brand’s Pmax Buys Were Served on AI-spun MFA Sites and Dead Domains

The number of AI-generated MFA sites has more than doubled since the beginning of the year, finds DeepSee.io

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