I know little about the ad business but the insinuation I've heard is that the advertisers don't want those impressions, but struggle to block these sites for one reason or another. In other words, it's basically a scam.

I think most advertisers aren't even aware, the ad platforms are so full of dark patterns it's hard to avoid this stuff.

That traffic is monetized in a few ways:

- Autoplayinig video ads

- Affiliate marketing (meal kits, cooking courses, etc)

- Adsense display ads

- Taboola/Outbrain

These don't bring in much money on a per-site basis, but the owners usually own multiple sites, so it can add up.

If you're able to get the site to grow, it becomes the easiest digital property in the world to maintain. The content doesn't need to be fresh, or engaging. People will always search for generic recipes.

It’s all very parasitic and relies on a lot of disconnect. The advertisers often don’t even know what they are buying as these things go through “exchanges” that are basically computers buying and selling as real estate. The smaller the business the more likely they are to end up scammed by this because they will have less tools to monitor things.

Seems to me like you have it backwards.

The reason you even got a chance to click on it is because they wrote it that way. If they didn't, it wouldn't be as visible in Google = nobody would see it. When most websites do this (to survive) folks don't have a choice.

Also, advertisers don't pay for something that's invisible.

To base your income and your future on something as volatile as Google search seem to me a terrible idea.

What if algorithm changes will tank your all your fleet of poor content websites you've spent last few years on?

Then you shut down the servers and move on. You got the ad dollars at that point, what do you care?

That reminds me of an ad network, which was usually displayed next to webcomics, with nearly all the adds pointing to other webcomics, who all had ads from the same network… I had no idea how that network was making any money or paying anything to the websites.

Perhaps you're thinking of Hiveworks? They're less an ad network and more like a publishing company for webcomics. Many of those types of "webcomic ad-rings" are.