Who Says Links are the New Web Currency?

I remember someone talking about how for website's popularity used to be about pageviews, but now blogs are using links as the base for establishing popularity. Or something like that. I was just thinking that that isn't really the case, because back when a website was just that, a website, where were the people getting cash from to support their dirty habit? as far as I know people who run websites with advertisings make a lot more money when someone clicks on an ad, yes, a linked ad, instead of simply seeing the ad. Why's this so? I'd presume that by clicking on the ad you have proof someone was sucked in by the advertisement, whereas pageviews are nice but don't cover the costs. So it has always been in the interest of websites to get viewers to click rather then view.

So what I'm trying to get at is that in my opinion links have always been a strong part of the Internet, and aren't suddenly in fashion due to weblogs. I'm sure this is what everyone else thinks, just some of the commenting during the first two weeks seemed to be propping up blogs as a new revelation in the way people use the internet regarding linkage and popularity. It's slightly more obvious with blogs, but its not really something new per se.

That's all.