Yes, you definitely can. And if you're extremely good at it, you can bring in executive-level pay as well, depending on the niche and verticals you are in (and your ability to negotiate better rev share with networks). Even though things are getting more and more competitive now that Google has tightened the noose industry-wide, the onset of mobile and apps has made things a whole new world of opportunities.

At my current job, we deal with over 250M unique user a month through millions of domains/zero-click redirects, many of which lead to adsense or lead-gen type landing pages. May publishers monetize this through the ways you are referring to. And anecdotal insights from my friends (and people at conferences like Affiliate Summit) will just show you that people are indeed making good money from this type of marketing.