[EDIT: As other commenters have mentioned, the simpler answer is that OP's ad is probably an instance of click fraud. Setting that aside, though, the phenomenon

[EDIT: As other commenters have mentioned, the simpler answer is that OP's ad is probably an instance of click fraud. Setting that aside, though, the phenomenon I describe below is likely still in effect, even with players playing by the rules.] I imagine that every stakeholder wants verifiable information that the ad was viewed. It would seem to be a problem of both trust (if some centralized ad server was to stream the analytics server-to-server to the stakeholders, there's no guarantee that that central entity is telling the truth, no way to verify unique IPs, and every economic reason for it to lie) and scale (why pay for bandwidth/CPU for a centralized server to make server-to-server connections when the end user can foot the cost). The problem is that the number of stakeholders has ballooned significantly, the same way that any sizable financial market will attract intermediaries like flies. And now we have an untenable situation. AppNexus is possibly the only player I can think of who's built both trust and infrastructure to address this, and indeed they are rolling out products like this: http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/ http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/ ... but it's very possible that the ecosystem becomes fragmented faster than it becomes consolidated.