Well, that's what you get for being in the click based ads game really. At this point, I would assume that these companies should just accept this as an occupational hazard. It's not like they can ever really beat the bots.
I saw a presentation. From a data scientist at bitly. She showed that spammer links have a distinctive traffic shape (constant over time) while real links have a totally different one (initial peak followed by logarithmic drop to zero). Similar patterns exist in advertising campaigns. 6MM/month seems like a lot of breakage that someone is fine cutting that check.
I think you mean it's an arms race. Arms races are good markets to be in as the hash-checking AV companies have proved.
I'll totally admit I'm skewed by operating on the data side and want to believe that my work has some lasting positive impact, and isn't a band-aid.
Do you find something particularly sinister or unethical about click-based ads (more so than any advertising)?
I do freelance dev work for some guys that run ads; it's just another business to me.
But this is analogous to TV advertisers complaining about TiVO and the ability to skip commercials. Can't stop it!