2,100+ AI-Generated Recipe Sites Raise New MFA Alarm

Supply chain intelligence firm DecryptAds has uncovered more than 2,100 AI-generated recipe sites built to monetize programmatic advertising, according to a study released Tuesday. The finding gives ad industry insiders their first concrete evidence for a warning they have voiced for months: generative AI would ignite an explosion in made-for-advertising (MFA) sites, low-value pages engineered to harvest ad dollars rather than serve readers.

By Elena Vasquez

Why the number matters

Ad executives have long argued that MFA pages erode programmatic economics. The DecryptAds research moves that argument from opinion to measurement. The study identified a specific, countable population: more than 2,100 sites in the recipe vertical alone. That figure covers one content category, which implies the total AI slop inventory across programmatic could be far larger.

The sites follow a familiar playbook, per the research. They borrow a page from classic MFA operators, generating content at near-zero cost and plugging it into ad tech supply chains that pay for impressions, not quality.

What does this mean for ad tech?

The study lands as ad tech faces what AdExchanger frames as its "new MFA challenge": a second wave of junk inventory, this time machine-produced at scale. The first MFA wave forced brands, agencies and verification vendors to build detection and exclusion tools for human-made arbitrage pages.

AI-generated slop raises the bar. Generative models can produce unlimited variations of plausible-looking text, which makes volume-based detection harder and floods the open exchange with cheap impressions. Advertisers buying on the open web absorb the cost through wasted spend and depressed viewability benchmarks.

The mechanism is straightforward. Content costs approach zero. Ad revenue per page stays positive. Every additional generated page is margin. That incentive structure, not any single operator, drives the growth DecryptAds documented.

What comes next

DecryptAds has not stated the full scope of its findings beyond the recipe category, and the industry has yet to publish a coordinated response to the new inventory wave. The study's Tuesday release gives buyers a named, quantified target: 2,100-plus sites and counting, with AI generation making the count a moving number rather than a fixed one.

The question AdExchanger posed — whether ad tech is ready for its new MFA challenge — now has a measurable test case attached.