As someone who started working at an ad agency during the online metrics boom, then went to a national news organisation to work as digital strategist, I tend to agree.

But I would pinpoint it to the inflated value of impressions. My experience (but i can not back this up) tells me that ad sellers tend to over estimate the impact of an impression, which makes the value chain completely inflated, and skews the business model. If ads were worth less (and, according to me, closer to the real value), less money would go round, and creating value for the end user would become more a necessity.

But I might be wrong, obvs.