How to Detect Non-Compliant Traffic Sources & MFA Traffic (And What to Do About It)
For Marketing Executives Focused on ROI, Integrity, and Performance

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The Hidden Cost of Cheap Reach

Marketers love scale. But in the race for impressions and clicks, many campaigns silently bleed budget on non-compliant traffic sources - traffic that never had a real chance of converting in the first place.

Among the most problematic offenders?
Made for Advertising (MFA) traffic: websites and apps engineered solely to monetize ads, not to deliver value or engage real users.

This isn’t just a media quality issue.
It’s a strategic threat to your marketing ROI, data integrity, and performance benchmarking.

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What Is Non-Compliant Traffic?

Non-compliant traffic refers to any source, session, or visitor that violates the basic terms of your ad buy, either geographically, technically, or behaviorally. It may still get billed. But it shouldn’t.

This includes:

• Known bots or automation tools
• Clicks from excluded geos
• Traffic from emulators or spoofed devices
• MFA traffic - arbitrage sites built to farm clicks
• Rapid-fire click loops or session hijacking
• Anonymous or untraceable users (VPN, incognito, proxy usage)
  
  

Even the most well-optimized campaigns can bleed budget if your traffic sources include bots, click farms, MFA pages, or other low-quality placements. These traffic patterns not only inflate your CPAs and ROAS but also distort attribution models and learning algorithms.

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What Are MFA Sites?

Made-for-Advertising websites are engineered not to deliver value to users, but to maximize ad impressions and clicks through deceptive UI patterns and thin, low-value content.

These sites often:

• Load dozens of ads per page
• Use bot traffic to boost views
• Obscure user paths to generate accidental clicks
• Are hidden inside programmatic placements you don’t control

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Signs You're Dealing with Non-Compliant Traffic or MFA Sites

• Unusual Bounce Patterns: Extremely high bounce rates or session durations under 1 second
• Disproportionate Click-to-Conversion Ratios: High CTR but poor post-click performance
• Geographic/Device Violations: Clicks from regions or devices that don’t match your campaign targeting (see Google’s policy)
• High Frequency Abuse: Multiple pageviews from the same IP in seconds, a signal of automation
• Content Farms: Your ad appears on pages with no editorial value or engagement

These aren’t just quality issues,  they are financial liabilities.

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The Real Problem: Platforms Bill First, Investigate Later

Platforms like Google and Meta charge immediately for all traffic,  even from these sources. Only after billing do they sometimes issue small credits for what they retroactively classify as invalid - see Meta’s own policy.

But by then, your budget is already gone and performance data is already skewed.

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Why MFA Traffic Is Especially Dangerous

MFA traffic is designed to mimic engagement but never delivers results. These websites often:

• Host auto-refreshing ad units
• Place multiple ads above the fold
• Fake interaction metrics like scroll or dwell time
• Rotate devices and IPs to appear “diverse”

Your campaign might look like it’s performing but conversions are nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, you’ve paid for every click.

The Impact on Your Campaigns

If you’re not filtering non-compliant sources:

• Your ROAS will lie to you. You’re paying for unqualified traffic.
• Your A/B tests get corrupted. MFA traffic skews test results with garbage sessions.
• Your lookalike audiences suffer. Bad traffic poisons your retargeting and LAL pools.
• Your budget leaks. You lose 10–25% of spend, often undetected until it’s too late.
  
  

How to Detect Non-Compliant Traffic & MFA Sources

Here’s what to audit, daily or weekly:

Non-compliant traffic sources - Spike in long-tail or low-authority sites

Why?: MFA domains are often hidden in longtail

Non-compliant traffic sources - Multiple user agents per IP

Why?: Indicates bots/emulation farms

Non-compliant traffic sources - Display traffic acting like search

Why?: Suggests spoofed sources

Session Violations - Page load but no scroll, click, or view event

Why?: Click fraud or accidental taps

Session Violations - 5+ sessions from same IP in 60 sec

Why?: Automated traffic pattern

Geo Violations - Clicks from regions outside your target

Why?: Breaches of campaign setup

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What to Do About It: The Vaudit Approach

Real-Time Detection: Vaudit’s engine flags invalid sessions before they hit your bill, tracking user agents, session behavior, and source domains in real time.

Geo & Device Flagging: Our pre-charge audit identifies out-of-geo traffic, device spoofing, and MFA domains before you pay.

Exclusion Lists & Prevention: Non-compliant traffic is pushed to exclusion audiences (e.g., Meta), blocked via IP, or auto-flagged in reconciliation workflows.

Legal-Grade Evidence: If it gets billed, our audit trail helps you challenge charges with documentation that meets internal finance and legal standards. Understand more about what charges could be disputed here. 

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Why This Matters for Marketing Executives

As a marketing leader, you’re accountable for two things:

1. Efficiency: Every dollar must drive real results.
2. Integrity: Your data must be trustworthy to optimize.
   
   

That means eliminating traffic that doesn’t belong, regardless of what the ad platforms say. It’s time to move beyond click-through rates and start asking “Was this click even legitimate?”

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Audit Your Campaigns for MFA & Non-Compliant Traffic

Start your 15-day free trial and uncover what shouldn’t be on your bill.

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