I'm getting increasingly convinced that AdWords is basically a scam. I worked on SEM optimization tools for two companies in the mid-2000s and ROI was great. Then ROI started to erode as the years passed as other players in our vertical entered our space, and as far we could tell, they were either a) just spending to make a huge brand play or b) had some way to monetize 150% than us because their CPCs were literally 150% higher.

My theory is that since SEM is often a separate unit from every other marketing organization in a company, this is what happens: The SEM team sets up an AdWords campaign, get great ROI on terms that contain their company's name or whatever, and crappy ROI on everything else. But the campaigns as a whole are ROI-positive, and because they're all being evaluated on that, no one will ever suggest, "hey, I know our company name is Joe's Widgets and we get great ROI on keywords like 'joes widgets,' but maybe we shouldn't buy that keyword at all because anyone searching for that will also see us as the #1 organic Google result." Because if the SEM team did that then their campaigns would no longer be ROI positive even if the company as a whole would benefit, and working for unprofitable departments is generally not good for your career.

Now I'm working at a company that's a major AdSense publisher and at least once a quarter something happens where we get a huge clawback for "quality issues we can't disclose," or we have to change our implementation, or whatever. It's just totally infuriating and I've realized there must be a lot of people like me who have basically spent their entire career being Google's bitch on the traffic acquisition side or monetization side.

I'm not so worried about monetization, as there is more than one way to make money from the internet besides AdSense. But as far as AdWords, I'm wondering if there's going to finally be some sort of tipping point where the mid-sized companies that have gotten squeezed out of AdWords find some other paid traffic provider that isn't infested by a) huge companies just making stupid brand players and b) small players blowing their $100 credit like what is described by the OP.

What would such a traffic provider look like? They have to be search PPC (again, lots of options for non-search paid traffic), they have to have enough volume, they have to have the technology to combat things like click fraud, and they have to be called something else besides Bing/Yahoo (which unfortunately have all the problems Google does, except less volume and even more terrible advertiser tools/APIs).