Some paid traffic is offered that is outside of the Facebook, Bing, or Adwords. However, the origin of the traffic is often low quality and in some cases bots. Note, this traffic can be straight-out traffic or via a PPC model. Anyhow, does anyone see any exceptions where it might be worth it to try this cheaper traffic?
You basically get what you pay for when it comes to traffic. Low quality traffic is usually only good for boosting views on Social Media sites, maybe boosting your livestreams and things like that.
You come out fighting with the word "scam" and then paint a broad slur across all traffic providers with no evidence. I'm guessing you purchased some traffic without doing your homework, paid very little, got very little and are now "butthurt". If you have a real "name and shame" case study by all means go ahead.
Testimonials would be the key to solving the problem, but those can also be fake, and I bet most are. However, in some niches like web-hosting, it isn't hard to find real complaints or praises. True, the word "scam" can be a tool of the immature and of haters.
Webhosting is easy because you can easily find out who a host's customers are and contact them. This thread, however, is about buying traffic and that's completely different.
I think a separate sub-forum needs to be about the discussion of traffic, as opposed to selling it. That would solve the problem I think. Also, the same thing needs to be done in regard to general services and advertising which also has sections.
Might be good though if one is making money in some way through traffic, like for instance as a content creator on YouTube or social media. If one is just simply out there for traffic and not capitalizing or monetizing on it, then it might not exactly be a good thing. But if one is looking to gain something even if it's through low quality traffic, then there might be something in it.
Sometimes people just want something like a press release. In other words, they only want massive amounts of people coming to the website, selling is irrelevant.
Unless they're trying to fudge traffic stats, they still want people to do something - even if it is just to bookmark the site, like their facebook page.