> Probably the main people getting stiffed are the publishers who are offering real traffic

Unless you're a large premium publisher like say a NYT, a Techcrunch, or even a Forbes, more of your traffic probably wont be real, and you have little to no control over that. The online ad/traffic buying game is so mind-blowingly convoluted, you can be a small publisher (foo.com), having your site spammed, and what little revenue you've made via your supply completely wiped out (i.e., clawed back by your upstream partner - even large publishers don't operate by themselves), and your reputation takes a hit.

The main people getting stiffed are the web users, and the advertisers. But it doesn't seem like either of them care enough about it to do something that can have a lasting effect