I started, ran an sold an ad based business in 2008. To say that most of the activity in the ad space was dubious back then is a complete understatement.
Most of our traffic to the adverts was generated, purely to syphon off money from the advertisers and we established this by fingerprinting the traffic with JS tools at the client side. This was what let me to the conclusion that the business is dysfunctional, the customers at best are getting wildly ripped off, their privacy effectively sold off and they open themselves up to huge amounts of malware too.
Advertising is a horrible business model. But until a new way is found, people/businesses don't have any other choice of marketing their activities.
I totally stand by the publication. Any publication that really cares about it's readers will try to find another way.
(Edit: I am viewing this page on a Brave Browser, check it out, it has ad blocking and publisher micropayments built in https://brave.com)
Most of our traffic to the adverts was generated, purely to syphon off money from the advertisers and we established this by fingerprinting the traffic with JS tools at the client side. This was what let me to the conclusion that the business is dysfunctional, the customers at best are getting wildly ripped off, their privacy effectively sold off and they open themselves up to huge amounts of malware too.
Advertising is a horrible business model. But until a new way is found, people/businesses don't have any other choice of marketing their activities.
I totally stand by the publication. Any publication that really cares about it's readers will try to find another way.
(Edit: I am viewing this page on a Brave Browser, check it out, it has ad blocking and publisher micropayments built in https://brave.com)