I will respond to the rest of your informative post later (as I need to go outside on this Sunday).

I think Synereo may be conceptually on the right track, in that ads should preferrably be content that users want to see. I can envision content providers being creative in how they advertise products within enjoyable content. The bottom line is the economics per my prior post in reply to TechorMarketing. There were one or two ads on Google that were so interesting to me, I wanted to save a copy of the video ad. Meaning the way to beat Google is by making the advertising more efficient, thus superior ROI for all participants (advertiser, content creator, and viewer). If the superior algorithms require decentralization and cutting out the middle man, then Google with all its technical prowess can do nothing to compete.

I only scanned a portion of their white paper. I believe they may have Sybil attack problems in their attention model (thus being gamed and not having the result intended), but I can't yet judge that with any certainty as I need to study it more carefully.

You've given me something very intellectually deep to chomp on, so thank you. I love conceptual paradigm shifts and I like to analyze models. I will need more time on this.

Looks to me as though they are serious. The devil is in the details on their technical model. They have a brainy looking CSO mathematician, so perhaps some of the model theory is originating from him.