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I think the point that the article is trying to make is a lot less dramatic than the title would suggest. Basically, there has been a long standing assumption

I think the point that the article is trying to make is a lot less dramatic than the title would suggest. Basically, there has been a long standing assumption that, netizens in general spend their time on a plethora of websites, and that instead of spending money on specific sites, one should spend money on audiences. In other words, advertise in accordance with a person's interests. However, due to recent exploitation of this assumption by other fake sites, and fake bot-generated visitors, this assumption has met some strong evidence that would disprove it. Could the advertisers simply get together and black list such advertising agencies that sell fake niche sites with fake bot-generated views? Or is that a naive view of things?

iaw 9y ago
My suspicion is that it would become a game of whack-a-mole where the cost of identifying perpetrators is higher for the advertisers than it is for perpetrators to create a new identity and start again.
jack9 9y ago
> this assumption has met some strong evidence that would disprove it. There is no evidence either way. Behavioral targeting works to some extent, e.g. retargeting. I visit Ford Fusion specs, later on Fox News a Ford Ad for a different truck appears. Detecting fraudulent sites is not only counter-productive for platforms (AOL One is shockingly lenient to pump up their "reach" numbers), but sites as well. Sites will pay for inflated automated traffic to consume advertising budgets. The foxes are decided how to parse up the hens.