> The approach is also not very cheap. At $40 in ad spend and at least a day to get the results, you could have just paid someone to write one or more blogspam articles, which is what this will optimize for.

I disagree. If you're one of the (few) companies that spend a significant amount of time planning and writing articles, then $40 is a very low amount to pay to learn which angle/theme/lede will get the best results, before your team spends time planning, researching, writing, and editing.