I agree. Fake traffic or not, it's factored into the price and the stats are still just too good compared to what you can get anywhere else from an information standpoint. As a marketing person, you're always proving your worth--digital ads make this a lot easier (at least if you're good at your job).
The problem (at least if you're selling digital ads) is I don't see a scenario where margins increase. The "ad network" effect will continue and there will be more consolidation in the industry with more link-bait headlines coming out of blog mills. The area where there could be more profit would be if content creators integrated more with advertisers, which is only going to get hairy and annoying in a different way. But for something like NYT--I wouldn't be all that surprised if the line between advertiser and content continues getting more fuzzy in order to maintain decent CPMs on what is probably a relatively fixed amount of traffic/inventory.
Another opportunity comes to mind--better demographic targeting, better inference algorithms (given a list of factors, what can we tell about this person re: age/sex/income/likelihood-to-buy-our-specific product-based-on-past-purchases?)--these will also allow content creators to maintain higher CPMs, so there's probably a market there.
The problem (at least if you're selling digital ads) is I don't see a scenario where margins increase. The "ad network" effect will continue and there will be more consolidation in the industry with more link-bait headlines coming out of blog mills. The area where there could be more profit would be if content creators integrated more with advertisers, which is only going to get hairy and annoying in a different way. But for something like NYT--I wouldn't be all that surprised if the line between advertiser and content continues getting more fuzzy in order to maintain decent CPMs on what is probably a relatively fixed amount of traffic/inventory.
Another opportunity comes to mind--better demographic targeting, better inference algorithms (given a list of factors, what can we tell about this person re: age/sex/income/likelihood-to-buy-our-specific product-based-on-past-purchases?)--these will also allow content creators to maintain higher CPMs, so there's probably a market there.