And I think that's exactly how adtech works, both internally and externally. Everyone is scamming everyone else with fudged and pretty opaque statistics, but there's enough ROI at the bottom that the whole thing hasn't collapsed yet.

So what you are saying is that all that is needed is for a newcomer to come and do things a little bit better and it will eat everybody's lunch. Just like google did to search engines when they started.

Sounds like a great business opportunity.

The core innovation that would be needed here is providing such good transparency and attribution that such newcomer could turn around and prove that all their competitors are scamming their customers. Without that, fudging numbers will prevail simply because it can make money without having to do as much work.

But in order to run a business you have to get customers from somewhere. And referrals aren't an option until you already have customers.

I don't think it was supposed to be an endorsement.

If I could pay just 70$ per customer bringing in 1000+$, I would spend all I could and borrow heavily to run those ads. From a business perspective, it's a great endorsement.

In this case they were selling skilled labor though so at some point their capacity would be reached. I'd guess that's why they only spent $15 a day.

This is how almost any business deal works. If you get more money out than you put in you do it.

Sure, the partner may be hard to work with, but so is almost any big tech platform provider (... Apple ...) and it can be quite profitable to put up with.