[tacosbane]

ads are essentially noise. some high-nines number of ads have no effect. to counteract this, demand-side providers came up with ways to fake an effect to look valuable. they then discovered clients couldn't tell the difference between real or fake, or didn't care because the clients also want to say their ads worked. then the race to the bottom began: buy the absolute minimum quality for as little as you possibly can. that put pressure on the supply side because their revenues fell.

examples of faking: - the search "companyname" takes credit for "companyname.com" - "we promise we didn't show you the one positive result from running 1000 tests"