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actually a lot of them still use google, which can also run private deal ads.

Yes. This is how it was done during the magazine era.

Rarely. It was usually an ad agency that would do the actual deals to get things into magazines.

You could always contact a single magazine, but big corporations would let their ad agency handle distribution

Did anybody advertise in 12000 magazines?

If you include international magazines and newspapers, then yes.

Just give them your ad code (a JS snippet), this way you control your ads.

Billing is a solved problem too, no?

> Billing is a solved problem too, no?

No. Billing is a huge pain in the ass. Negotiating price with each site is a huge pain in the ass. Building a reliable JS snippet that works everywhere and that these sites will trust is also a huge pain in the ass. Everything about dealing with 5k sites manually is a pain in the ass, which is why ad networks exist in the first place.