[redbeard0x0a]

We aren't missing the point of web advertising. The problems being described, especially with traffic laundering - illegitimate sites are making money from ads, but aren't giving a return to the company buying the ad. When you have a low ROI on making an ad, you stop buying them. At that point, we don't have enough legitimate ads to support the web content we actually want to see survive.

The solution isn't to get rid of the Ads, it is to get rid of the perversion of the system (easier said than done). An efficient ad system is better for everybody.

[jamiequint]

This is true. The problem is stupid buyers. Many people here would be shocked at the lack of sophistication (or 'sophisticated buying theater') some marketers use to deploy 8 figure annual marketing budgets. It's getting better slowly and as it does we'll see less of this kind of crap.

To their credit, many of the DSPs (at least AppNexus) are trying to clean up their own systems as well and automatically block this type of traffic from being purchased. The trend in ad-tech right now around viewability and viewable eCPM metrics is also a step in the right direction.