a factor not apparent in your thinking is the question of demographics. All people might well be a suitable metric for Nike. But it’s a very wasteful idea for very many others. Especially when the web makes that universal.
AdSense naturally drives prices to zero because despite the “metrics” it’s impossible to know with any certainty who’s looking. Media that rely on open metrics inevitably head towards cheap, nasty ways to drive “traffic” which themselves accentuate the demographic failings.
Pricing content actually helps discriminate and raises relevance and almost certainly justifies higher CPM.
Of course, nothing wilo save those whose content is irrelevant.

Online, in contrast, has a) unlimited inventory and b) excruciatingly exact statistics (how many clicks? what time of day? where did they go next? where did they come from? did they eventually buy? was it two days later? was it online, or in a real store? and so on…)

Those statistics, ironically, allow advertisers to claim they’re getting less value out of those ads, and therefore pay less for them. That, coupled with the fact that they can always take their money someplace else (because Google is *always* willing to take their money, no matter how little), means that publishers are between a rock and a hard place.

Unfortunately.

Though I imagine it will never be enough to fully support these publications (assuming they pay their writers more than beer money unlike many online content producers)…