[seydor]

There were a bunch of ad marketplaces that were pretty transparent - (buysellads.com? not sure, and many others) because they were pretty basic, you were buying ads directly on websites. Google is not transparent on the publisher or the advertiser side. Advertisers "bid" on "keywords" with the amount that google suggests (pulled out of their ass? who knows). On the publisher side, if you add "auto ads" on any website, a bunch of ads appear all over the place, most of the time breaking your page layout. You are given an RPM for your ads that , as far as i know, could also be pulled out of their ass. They control the inflow and the outflow, and adjust according to their cashflow needs. Advertisers like them because they provide a lot of bloated dashboards with fancy graphs as proof of their work.

[ehnto]

I did always find auto-pricing for ads weird. Why would I trust the one entity that stands to gain from an increase to set my bid? The fact that it's impossible to verify the veracity of the system makes that a no-go for me, but clearly not for everyone.