No, and that's is the root of the problem. The buyer is happy and so is the seller. They don't care to understand what they're allowing and everyone is allowing it to happen.
I wouldn't use a device like this for a lot of reasons, but the fact that what they are doing might be taking advantage of the incredibly predatory digital advertising system is neutral to positive for me, if I'm being fully honest.
If they were using the system to rip off random people, I'd be 100% against it, if they are fucking Google and the giant corps that advertise with them, ehh.. not my problem and can't be assed to care. Google is not a positive force in the world. Hasn't been for many years.
Proctor & Gamble did an experiment: they cancelled all of their online advertising and watched their sales numbers. Sales didn't change. That sort of thing is downstream of this sort of thing. Online advertising is a money black hole, a sacrifice to the gods. It doesn't really do anything.
Let's say you are an ad buyer. Previously 1M clicks resulted in 1000 sales, now 2M clicks result in the same 1000 sales. If you previously paid $1000 for 1M clicks, you paid $1/sale. If they are now asking you to pay the same $1000 / M clicks you'd be paying $2/sale, so Google would have to drop to $500 / M clicks to offer the same value to advertisers.
But the same applies to ad sellers as well. Google would have to slash payouts to websites displaying ads by the same 50% / click or they'd be cutting into their margins. A competing ad platform without fraudulent clicks would be able to slide into this space, offering both a better value to ad buyers and a better payout to ad sellers, so they'd be taking market share from Google without having to do anything themselves.
Of course that assumes a market in which the value of ad clicks, views, and placements is clear to everyone and switching between ad platforms is trivial, which is not even remotely the case.
Sure but for the ad network, it means they can brag to new clients about how many clicks they can get them. If the ad clicker isn't buying, that's the client's problem, you already did your job by getting them to click. Maybe the client needs a more direct campaign (which costs more) or needs to change their website/prices, people are walking into the store but they just aren't buying.
Its either the ad network running these click botnets or contracting someone to do it. If it was just impressions getting boosted, that just looks shady, those are barely worth anything.
And why should they care? There is literally no reason they should care, it does not affect them in any way, if it causes ad companies to ban their IP address that's actually good for them personally, and most people outside of the ad business would agree that hurting ad companies is good.
> They don't care to understand what they're allowing
If you told normal people that they could get free content with a TV streaming stick that would also constantly fake clicks on AI generated websites to screw advertisers over, they would think of it as a bonus. Also it would make them trust the stick more (fallaciously), because they would know how the people who sold it were getting paid.
