What is an "ad" really? There are companies who will pay money for a bit of attention, and companies who get some attention willing to sell it.<p>There will always be a market for selling attention. Always. It's never going away. Attention is a valuable commodity and companies are willing to pay for some.<p>CPMs, CPCs, CPAs... don't matter. There's a budget for ads, and that budget will get spent. Who it goes to and how much attention it buys them will change.<p>When I left the web dev game last year, the big exciting trend was dynamic bidding systems, where many different ad networks would bid to show you an ad in real time. [1]<p>Advertisers are adapting. Publishers are adapting. RTB comes and increases profits and in the end, publishers who adapt do fine.<p>While CPMs for traditional banner ads continue to fall, that just means the market for selling attention has moved on to something else.<p>[1] <a href="https://clearcode.cc/blog/real-time-bidding/" rel="nofollow">https://clearcode.cc/blog/real-time-bidding/</a>