"It’s MY attention, MY intention, and MY purchase — Google and other intermediaries will make all the money, and I won’t see a dime." That's one way of looking at it. The other way is that you're being provided a service. You go looking for some nice reviews, and land up on a nice review site, and while going through the articles there, your eyes fall on an interesting advertisement for 20% off on the product that you were thinking of purchasing and were reading the review of. Now, was it not helpful for you to have found that ad at that time ? It sure did save you that 20% did it not ? Now, I am not saying that there arent websites that sell you all those discounted stuff. What I'm saying is that these ads are not all useless from the point of view of the consumer. It's not always a question of revenue share, when it comes to measuring the usefulness of something. :)