Arbitrage MFA Annihilated

June 1st. That is the date Google Adsense will be deleting arbitrage publisher accounts. For some it was a sweet run, the literally tens of thousands made from MFA sites… and for others it was even sweeter. Supposedly the email says the accounts are related to an “Unsuitable Business Model” and they have two weeks till their accounts are disabled. Thankfully, all amounts due will be paid to the publishers.

This is a big kick in the teeth to a TON of publishers, both on the white and black hat side of the realm… but my opinion is that the MFA guys aren’t really the only ones doing arbi. In a sense both comparison shopping and affiliate marketing (ppc) are doing arbitrage. Arbitrage is simply the practice of taking advantage of a market imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market price, so driving PPC to a landing page full of affiliate redirects is essentially the same thing. The big reason Google is targeting MFA though is to protect it’s Content Network. One of the first things I do on an adWords campaign is disable the Content Network, and I know I’m not the only one who does this! But I suppose Google killing off MFA will eventually boost the payouts of other “more legitimate” publishers and reinstate faith for smaller advertisers in the Content Network.

To all the arbitrageurs, I bid you adieu. I know I will see more of you with me on YPN (when it’s out of beta) and possibly on Microsoft’s new contextual service… Oh and I don’t do MFA.

Thanks to Jensense for the break!