Digital advertising optimized toward clicks, last-touch attribution and viewability over the past two decades rather than signals tied to real business impact, according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/demanding-views/ad-tech-learned-to-game-itself/53162/).
The industry trained its systems on metrics convenient to track at scale. For smaller advertisers these signals can suffice because most conversions tie back to media when baseline demand remains low.