My main objection to the bidding system is not even the unpredictability, but that it rewards the wrong things. I don't want to pay more to a site that happens to have car insurance ads. I don't want to pay less to a site that installed fewer banners.

...hang on, when did google contributor relaunch as a service that pays per-page-load, is opt-in per domain, and is basically useless?

Google, you manage to do youtube red just fine. Try harder.