I quite like the idea of a self-serving, artificial and mostly automated ad market. Maybe making it wholly automated would be an improvement..
Like: a browser plugin that would randomly click ads in a different browser profile, maybe through an IP-masking proxy, without ever displaying them or the pages they load to the user (hey, maybe without ever traversing the last mile from the proxy to the user's computer.)
In this way, and assuming the clicks can be made indistinguishable from actual for-real user clicks (maybe a tall order if a proxies are involved?), the whole ad market automation circle could complete while still retaining a usable web. The online ad economy spins off to become a self-sustaining fully automated exchange bubble, visible to the external world only at its interface to participants' billing systems and analytics.
Publishers and ad networks win because clicks, network infrastructure providers win because traffic is lucrative and content providers can flourish, users win big time because they have all the benefits of an ad-supported free-beer web with none of the down side (actually seeing and being tracked by ads, that is.)
So long as the advertisers (or, more specifically, the campaign managers' bosses) don't catch on, what could go wrong?
In this way, and assuming the clicks can be made indistinguishable from actual for-real user clicks (maybe a tall order if a proxies are involved?)
Unless your automated system actually spends money then it will always be distinguishable from the real thing. Advertisers, no matter how wealthy they might be, cannot afford to pay for a "fully automated exchange bubble" that gives them zero returns.
Like: a browser plugin that would randomly click ads in a different browser profile, maybe through an IP-masking proxy, without ever displaying them or the pages they load to the user (hey, maybe without ever traversing the last mile from the proxy to the user's computer.)
In this way, and assuming the clicks can be made indistinguishable from actual for-real user clicks (maybe a tall order if a proxies are involved?), the whole ad market automation circle could complete while still retaining a usable web. The online ad economy spins off to become a self-sustaining fully automated exchange bubble, visible to the external world only at its interface to participants' billing systems and analytics.
Publishers and ad networks win because clicks, network infrastructure providers win because traffic is lucrative and content providers can flourish, users win big time because they have all the benefits of an ad-supported free-beer web with none of the down side (actually seeing and being tracked by ads, that is.)
So long as the advertisers (or, more specifically, the campaign managers' bosses) don't catch on, what could go wrong?