Yes but not to the degree that the ad network will make less money in total. If you understand how advertisers optimize their campaigns and think it through you'll come to this conclusion. Performance-based marketers will reduce bids until they asymptote at the real value of the traffic. But other marketers with bad stats will just keep spending, and performance-based marketers launching new campaigns will need to run run-of-network until they've blacklisted the crappy placements. In the end, the ad network will make more money and advertisers will lose money.

This is just one of a billion issues with a simple implementation of this idea. Another issue is that merely clicking ads without adequately spoofing your fingerprint will just get you ignored by the smarter networks... I could go on and on but don't have time atm

This all sounds good to me. Punishing ad industry would be the best, but punishing dumb advertisers and punishing dumb ad networks also sound great.

Punishing the people who buy ads is a far more effective strategy that gets to the heart of the issue.

Also, just as effective.

ad spend (as percentage of gdp) has remained constant for more than 100 years

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BVIsd8mMLFM/Wk7XXTQvWEI/AAAAAAAAI...

Spend less by spending more?