[jaredmck]

Ask.com & AOL are large chunks of change for the "google search network" syndication partners. This is probably most of the $3B+ in traffic buying.

[jcampbell1]

It has tripled in the past three years, so that seems unlikely given there is no Ask / AOL growth.

Maybe it is YouTube payments. There is talk about YouTube Revenue being $3.5B and I assume that started from nothing about three years ago. I assume about 1/2 of YouTube revenue goes to the content creators.