Sounds interesting but definitely need to see this in action to fully understand it. For example, how is the tracking done? If it is just a link, that means people have to click the link on the blog for the volume of traffic/interest to be gauged. If I show up on the blog, I may participate in the conversation but I probably wouldn't click the link to go offsite. Now if it was an image or something embedded within the blog page, where the discussion was, then they could track the volume of conversations on that page. No need for anyone to click a link offsite.
Another question is can any blog participate? If so, if the conversation is interesting you might have a slew of blogs linking to the question. The company posting the question may only have a small budget, so who gets the money? Only the larger high traffic sites? If so, if I was a smaller site, then I'd get ticked off that I didn't get any funds for my traffic even if it was only a small amount.
As I said, I definitely need to see this in action. Still I find it somewhat funny reading about this. I mean if companies just looked at their referrer logs, they could see who is generating traffic for them. Why not just pass some of their advertising budget to these sites, especially the ones who drive a lot of traffic towards them? Hopefully this new model will allow smaller blogs to generate revenue as well though.