Agree completely. The sentiment that this is all a shell game and advertisers are being completely manipulated always seems to come from people who don’t have much domain expertise.

I’d be quick to throw digital advertising to the wolves but the reality is that it’s extremely effective. Is there a level of opacity? Yes. Are there tranches of junk traffic and ineffective tools put forth by the ad networks? Absolutely. But these are problems at the margins, and don’t invalidate the fact that advertising on Google and Facebook in particular are very effective, and measurable to enough of an extent that it makes sense to keep doing it and growing your level of investment.

The majority of advertisers both large and small get that they can’t let the quest for perfection in advertising attribution be the enemy of progress.