There were some dedicated submissions about ad fraud on HN. In long term companies tend to reach equilibrium, where both reducing and increasing ad budget decreases profit. It is a classic prisoners dilemma, giving up on ads with poor ROI would be obvious decision if it wasn't for competitors who will benefit both from some actual conversions and lower bids for domain specific keywords.

the alternative - not buying ads - is worse though. No one knows about you, and you sell nothing. so it ends up being seen as a cost of doing business. that is passed on to paying customers.

I'm really starting to wonder how much of the "ground level" inflation is actually caused by "passing on" the cost of anti-social behaviors to paying customers, as opposed to monetary policy shenanigans.

I hope so but I don't know.