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It indeed is and I'm still not sure if I understand it 100%, so follow my thinking: The Guardian sells ad space in its site. They can do this because they're a prestigious news outlet which people visit frequently, so besides their stories, they put a big ass ad to people click on. So how's that selling people and not ad space? It seems to me that ad space only becomes ad space because people were already looking at it. As Asa Dotzler put it: The model works a lot like the previous era of television or newspapers. Advertisers pay content providers to include ads alongside their content. Content providers make most of their money from advertisers. Users get a "free" service. http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2011/12/firefox_...
But what happens if users suddenly stop visiting the Guardian? Suppose the company were involved in a scandal, its reputation tarnished and the traffic slows down. Some of the advertisers might pull the ads and maybe some of those international reporters might have to come home. So what's basically happening is big media is telling advertisers we have this huge number of people who are looking at us. If you give us money, you can stand besides us and be seen too.