What is the difference between search arbitrage and MFA (made-for-advertising) sites?
Both buy cheap traffic and resell the attention. MFA or display arbitrage sites earn from many banner and video ads per page, paid per impression through programmatic exchanges. Search arbitrage earns from search ads, paid only when a visitor clicks a sponsored result. The first sells views in bulk; the second sells a smaller number of intent-driven clicks.
In ad arbitrage of the display kind, the publisher maximises impressions per visit with slideshows and auto-refreshing ads and is paid on CPM. Advertisers and trade bodies call these sites Made-for-arbitrage or made-for-advertising, and many buyers exclude them.
Search arbitrage is paid per click by search advertisers, so the buyer is a performance marketer watching conversions, not a brand buying reach. That makes the policing different: display arbitrage is fought with exclusion lists and supply-path tools such as ads.txt, search arbitrage with feed policies, smart pricing and clawbacks. Some sites do both. The shared weakness is content created mainly to carry ads.