[Andrew_nenakhov]

There was a period when I was constantly showered with these ads whenever I visited YouTube. It quickly became clear that it was some kind of scam, but YouTube didn't do anything about it for years.

[zaphirplane]

Does clicking on the ad cost the spammer a lot of money

[LadyCailin]

Yes, which is one of two reasons why I use a blocker called adnauseum. It an adv locker that “clicks” on every single ad it sees, as well as hides it from my view. This makes my ad profile useless, and also costs them money.

[0_gravitas]

Depends on bot-detection and if its a CPC or CPA campaign