[mattnewton]

Advertisers are locked into an arms race for attention with each other. Even if you were stuck with the same slice of eyeball time, you can still grow by selling it for more, and in many ways that's what google's auctions are set up to do. But google's investment in youtube in particular has steadily grown the eyeball-time they have access to as well. I'm not ruling out fraud but I don't see how these facts prove fraud, it seems more like google continuing to naturally benefit from the decline of traditional print and television media.

[causality0]

Sometimes I wonder what fraction of people employed in advertising think they're making the world better by exposing customers to good products and what percentage aren't in denial about the fact they're weaving dollars out of human misery.

[dasil003]

Never worked in ad tech so no incentive to see things one way or the other. I do think it’s sad that so much brain power has gone into it, but “weaving dollars out of human misery” is a bit much.

[walleeee]

Indeed, it's not fair to lay all the blame at the feet of the middling adtech worker. Plus a good fraction of the fibers are certified non-human.