I'm not the best programmer in the world, so this might be something that others are totally fin with, but the prolog course during my computer science classes totally eluded me.
Even PPC assembly was rather easy in comparison. I was bad at it, but at least I intuitively knew how it sort of all came together in one system.
If Blendle continues to be successful this could get very interesting though. As described in the article linked here, it's a great metric. And their publishers will also start to use their metric. So -while they now describe the Blendle-revenue as an extra- this will actually change the way we deal with the 'print' data which is now accessible online, creating a new dynamic. This will surely have an impact on the print version of these magazines as well, I can imagine, making Blendle a content driver(shaper?) and not 'just' a source of 'extra revenue' as they tend to see it now.
If it all takes off impact will, imho, be different than we can probably predict now, even though we can make some estimates of possible directions. Some people will be happier with the results after -say- five years than others.
Time will tell.
I figure the thing is with Blendle, as with most paywallsystems, is that they actually turn 'micropayments' into larger payments. ie: you don't want to do a bank-transaction every time you hit a paywallbutton, so they make you pay a larger sum and give you credits. (Like other paywall might provide you with a subscription.)
The extra smart thing here being, of course being twofold: First of all, they provide you this service for a myriad of outlets. (Thus limiting the actual transactions (such a hassle!) with your bank even more.
And second: they provide a service for newspapers to publicise their print content online.
As far as I'm concerned, the core thing they made is a way of transferring all these 'print' articles to online. A benefit for publishers. This is now slowly shifting towards the 'one stop paywall' core business. One probably couldn't start without the other, but in the end we'll have a completely new thing. (Which I've described in several rants in Dutch.. yadieyada... stuff.)
I tend to pay more for articles these these, although for full disclosure I'd have to say that I work for a media outlet. (And yes' we're in Blendle, and we're not even print! ;) )
Even though it seems like your setup is not really good, (as others have remarked here) I think the central question you posed here still holds up to some extend: "where do they get their traffic from?".
When getting involved with aff-networks I have noticed that there are quite a lot of 'low quality' (of course depending on your needs) networks around that basically lure people into visiting your site, other than referring truly interesting people to you. That seems like business 1-0-1, but it really amazed me how many large networks use shady landingpages with obscure lotteries and other 'prizes'. (This was a about 2-3 years ago, but still..)
Always do a small run first, track what's happening and why and always be suspicious about people 'selling' you other people's data/attention (data-pushers, is what I used to call them) because that's basically what is is, to some extend.
In the end I figure most people use it in exactly that way: it just presents a nice (big) header picture. (Based on actual content) And less in some idle hope of getting CTR's.
But: that would mean you could probably do without a carousel as well. (Think about just the header picture of your latest article, the most popular one or just a random one)