Remember back in the day when we showed page views on our sites
 

Why did everyone stop.

I remember cybererotica's have like 99898822223234434

"99898822223234434" - Sorry man, but, actually it was 99898822223234435

I remember when people used to set the counters so it looked like they had 99898822223234435, but I am not sure how many people used the real numbers after their first week or so. :)

I wonder if it's a good marketing tactic?

That was back in the days before you had webmaster programs/rev share and banners were bought and sold for a fixed price per month. It was one of the only ways to value the price of the banner spot based on views. That's one of the reasons XXXCounter did so well back in the day - it was a 3rd party numbers tracking counter and people couldn't fudge the numbers.