Actually the collapse of the banner-ad market trashed a lot of businesses back in the day. Gamespot.com, once an excellent video game resource, now is mostly subscription-only, so a lot of folks don't read it. Same for IGN. There is a lot less "freely readable web" now, more requirements for subscriptions and (at minimum) registrations. The collapse of the banner-ad market also spawned more popups, splash ad pages (see ign.com), and shockwave ads such as "punch the monkey". While fraud is only part of the problem, it is a substantial part. Sites don't pay for ads anymore because of people like freak.
Fraud helps no one. In the meantime, I'll use Mozilla Firefox to block my popups -- and I'll leave most of the banner ads on so the sites can get a bit of revenue to pay for themselves.
I figure boycotting popups client-side is perfectly within my rights, but getting money out of a company for pretending to be interested in their sponsor is dishonest.
