It’s happening in other parts of the research world too: a couple colleagues of mine were talking recently about a paper we found at a conference last year that had a web page to go along with it with a domain and fancy graphics and such. For a boring programming languages paper. We concluded this is the modern way to try to jack your citations by getting noticed for everything but the technical content of the work, which is a bit off putting.
Getting funding and good job offers is mostly about marketing. Even worse, lots of people controlling the purse strings aren't domain experts. In a way, it's no different from getting published in specific high-profile publications or attending specific universities.
