Yes you see them across many sites. I fail to see how they would be paying propositions. Many news sites incorporate them clearly marked as "paid content", however the few I have even bothered to look at were unlikely to have visitors remaining longer than a few brief seconds.

Utterly pointless. I have no idea as to what revenue these news sites garner from it - I'd be surprised if they accept 5c clicks, but whoever is paying - they sure are wasting their money.

Is Adsense dying?

New spam content without need of SEO or google ranking

I don't see the connection. These are different platforms, used for different reasons.

When evil is found (done by websites using adsense) it is bellowed loud and long that adsense is dying.

Not true.

Adsense is not the cash cow it once was (the g algo being the largest part of taking MFA and non-conforming sites out of the index), but still functions as advertised (pun intended). As a revenue stream adsense still works, you just won't get rich quick.

My postman occasionally delivers junk mail, presumably because someone is paying. This doesn't mean the postal service is dying.

I mentioned earlier that I see these paid content ads across news sites. I just saw another lot - the site clearly labels these:

Promoted Stories - Sponsored links by Taboola

Another news site I regularly visit labels them as "Paid Content". In other words "infocommercials".

Also nothing to do with AdSense. Even if there were "Click Bait" ads via AdSense [arbitrage?] - as I said before, I fail to see how they could possibly be a paying proposition for anyone.

I'll now pay closer attention - but I suspect it won't be AdSense.

First here is a good description of what I believe you are referring to. The subject of the linked article refers to this as "chum". This piece does a great a job of describing what exactly this spam is, but provides no insight into how to stop or control it.
[cbc.ca...]

I have just spent the last two weeks corresponding back and force with Adsense support on how to block/stop/report these types of ads that appear on my site. Essentially there is not much you can do, besides block it as you see it.