2,100 AI-Generated Recipe Sites Expose Programmatic's New MFA Problem

Researchers have identified more than 2,100 AI-generated recipe sites built to farm programmatic ad dollars, according to a study released Tuesday by the advertising supply chain intelligence company DecryptAds.

The finding confirms what ad industry insiders have warned about for the past two years. Generative AI, they argued, would ignite an explosion in made-for-advertising (MFA) sites — pages of machine-written content engineered to monetize via programmatic ad tech. Until now, that argument rested largely on anecdote.

This study changes the math.

What did DecryptAds actually find?

The company counted over 2,100 recipe sites whose content appears to be AI-generated. DecryptAds says these operations take a page straight from the classic MFA playbook that originally spread across low-quality human-written sites.

The scale matters for context. More than 2,100 domains in a single content vertical suggests industrial-level production, not scattered experimentation. Recipe content is a natural target: it follows predictable formats, attracts high-intent search traffic, and is cheap to mass-produce with current language models.

Is this confirmed or speculation?

The 2,100-site figure comes from DecryptAds' own research, released Tuesday. The wider industry claim — that generative AI is fueling a new wave of MFA inventory — is now supported by that data, at least for the recipe vertical.

What remains unresolved is total scope. The study covers one content category. It does not claim to measure AI slop across news, finance or lifestyle inventory, and no figure in the released findings speaks to those sectors.

What does it mean for buyers and publishers?

For media buyers, the implication is budget leakage. Every dollar spent on AI-generated MFA inventory is a dollar not reaching a real publisher's audience, and detection tools built for human-written junk may struggle to flag fluent machine text.

For legitimate publishers, the risk is price pressure. Floods of cheap synthetic inventory can drag down open-marketplace CPMs, hitting the independent sites that produce actual reporting.

For verification vendors and supply chain firms, the study doubles as a commercial signal. DecryptAds is itself in the supply chain intelligence business, and its research arrives as advertisers weigh which tools can flag AI slop before it lands in a campaign report.

AdExchanger frames the open question plainly in its own reporting: is ad tech ready for its new MFA challenge? The 2,100-site count suggests the industry will find out quickly, because the production cost of the next 2,100 sites is close to zero.