Ask HN: Could HITs (human-intelligence-tasks) compete with in-app video ads?

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is and continues to be an interesting phenomenon; do there or could there be substantially valuable “human-intelligence-tasks” that could be completed and compete with ads as a revenue source for people who show ads for revenue (say we call them “Publishers”). Facebook is fighting ad-blockers and ad-blockers are fighting back. Facebook is fundamentally a company that makes software which turns users into revenue (it’s novelty is that it provides access to the worlds largest social network in exchange). Word on the street in CPC advertising is that mobile ad spends are having better return-of-investment rates than computer targeted campaigns for independent e-commerce sites(I cannot present data to support this claim).

So ultimately, why is mechanical turk a long lived internet novelty? Are ads as a revenue stream for online products and services at risk? Can we better monetize 30 second mandatory video ads by replacing them with HITs? Maybe such a system gives reputation to task completers and skill level increases means fewer tasks. Maybe advertisers just want to A/B test potential products at scale or to targeted demographics instead of just generating leads and customers.