[xypage]

It gives the networks money but it also hurts the companies actually running the ads, which would disincentivize them to do it at all, and the networks will only make more money if companies don't see a decrease in pay off for clicks and reduce their offers/stop running ads through that service altogether.

That being said realistically this is too niche for nearly enough people to run it to make any significant difference on the scale of the networks themselves, it'll just obfuscate your tracking a little.

[janalsncm]

It raises the cost per conversion, but whether that will translate to fewer ad-spend dollars isn’t clear to me. Maybe they will increase their budgets to maintain the same conversion numbers.

There was also an interesting Freakonomics episode on whether ads work at all. The incentives for advertising aren’t exactly rational. What’s good for a company isn’t always good for an individual working in the ads department of that company. Plus, the money is often there whether it works or not, and advertising departments will always insist that they do.