[dwaite]

At least some ad views have to convert to sales or companies would have long ago given up on the advertising medium.

It is hard to imagine someone who went through the age of Flash-based ads not looking at all injected advertisements with a sense of utter scorn, though. The split between content provider and advertising marketplace otherwise seems to mean that both consider the end user to only be valued in terms of their eyeballs.

I suspect it is because for some people, the advertisements actually are on-point and represent things they might be interested in.

I still find direct advertisement arrangements - such as temporarily co-branding a gaming site with a launching game, having a podcast talk about sponsors' products - to be much more on point.