I think we all know what the quote is about even though it's not an actual Ponzi scheme, it's just fraud. Another good reminder to question everything, especially group wisdom.
Adtech industry is about tools for things of questionable ethics. You shouldn't expect people doing and selling that to be paragons of honesty, who won't use their tools and methods against competition and customers within the industry.
Reminds me of this story about why whales don't die of cancer: because they're so large, that by the time their cancer grows to be dangerous, it gets its own cancer and dies.
The BBC article you posted looks like it has results that are 1) derived from actual animals, and 2) more directly useful, but I'm just a little disappointed that tumor cannibalism isn't their explanation, if I'm honest.
I don't think this hypothesis is widely accepted, but I remembered it because it's neat, and fits the game-theoretic model of cooperation/defection perfectly - which also makes it extremely useful for drawing analogies.
Tumors can be seen as made of cells which eschew cooperation with the rest of the body, and instead selfishly multiply, to the detriment of the whole and ultimately themselves.
It is my belief that advertising is a cancer on the society; it's exploiting - and in the process, destroying - every vulnerable individual and social heuristic. It involves uncooperative behaviors like manipulating people and lying to them.
The analogy here is that since entities making up the advertising industry eschew cooperation and embrace exploiting others for short-term gains, they're not going to magically start playing fair and cooperating within the industry. Therefore, to the extent you expect advertisers (including adtech) to scam you, they'll scam each other just the same - as seen in this article.
This, fortunately, somewhat limits the effectiveness of that industry.
I came up with this analogy few years ago, when I read accusations that Optimizely designed their A/B testing suite's UI in a way that promotes drawing statistically unsound conclusions from A/B tests, misleading you to believe that the tested intervention worked - and thus making you think Optimizely is successfully helping you learn things. My own personal observations from working alongside one social marketing team also confirmed the soundness of this analogy.
Reminds me of this story about why whales don't die of cancer: because they're so large, that by the time their cancer grows to be dangerous, it gets its own cancer and dies.