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Ad networks use real-time bidding to auction banner ad space as the page loads. (I imagine that's part of the reason it can take so damn long for some news sites to load.) Why can't the user (or their user agent) take part in this same auction? If I'm will to pay $0.02 per page view on nytimes.com, but advertisers are only willing to pay $0.01 then I should be able to win the auction.

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That's a slick idea and one you could actually execute with some amount of success today. The basic idea would be that you could sign up for an advertiser account on a DSP (Demand Side Platform), create a retargeting audience, cookie your own web browser cache to place yourself in your retargeting audience, and then buy ads against that audience - ie yourself.

That would be essentially the same thing this guy did to his roommate: http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...

So, exactly this:

https://contributor.google.com/u/0/

You even have control over who gets your money:

http://i.imgur.com/4Vuuefm.png

Interesting! I thought Google Contributor was more of a direct micropayment system for content, but from that link it looks like real-time bidding.

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