[lucideer]

Bot visits need incentives. There's two:

1. the current incentive where individual brands can defraud ad exchanges' pay-per-x systems. Without pay-per-x this incentive disappears.

2. publishers defrauding advertisers. This has similar cost & risk ratios online as either misreporting numbers or bulk-buying papers does in real life. There's also very little tangible difference between the ability of authorities or legal agents to enforce honest reporting of numbers online and in print. The two scenarios are eminently comparable.

Ultimately, removing pay-per-x brings online ads and the ability to defraud advertisers down to a level of equivalence with print.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

There is no honest reporting of numbers online without some sort of tracking.