When ads are sold programatically (at least at the exchange level), they're almost always done on an impression basis, not a click basis. So by the time you see

When ads are sold programatically (at least at the exchange level), they're almost always done on an impression basis, not a click basis. So by the time you see the ad, most of the financial exchange has already taken place. Some DSPs, like Criteo, charge their clients on a CPC basis, so you're affecting their downstream clients but not Criteo itself. Depending on the exchange, you can sometimes see how much the DSP/client paid for the impression by looking at the win notification URL. Typically there will be a URL query parameter that has been filled in by the exchange, like `BID_CPM=4.00`, and when your browser requests this URL (which is owned by the DSP/client), your browser is effectively notifying the winner of the auction that they won and how much it cost. However, ad exchanges are increasingly sending these fields encrypted to protect against manipulation/fraud. If you really want to manipulate the amount of money that advertisers pay to show you ads, look at what ad botnets like the one in this article do. The PDF above only briefly mentions it, but one of the things they do to increase their perceived value to DSPs and clients is they make their browsers visit high value advertisers websites (e.g. they might visit a shopping website and put items in their cart to make it look like they were strongly considering purchasing the items). Later, when you visit a publisher site, this will cause the bidders' machine learning systems to predict a much higher value for you than they otherwise would have, and submit higher bids as a result.