Ask Lemmy

There are ads I deliberately searched for like the fun viral music videos by Berlin public transit authorities. There's even adds I physically ordered per mail. My home state in Germany had an ad-campaign where they printed stickers with "Nice here! But were you ever in Bade -Wurrtemberg?" that you could get per mail. Vandalism got these stickers everywhere and there was even a subreddit about spotting these in weird and faraway places. I also did paste a few in interesting places.

My own ads, just to make sure they still work (for the 40% who still don't block ads)

Not clicked but the most effective advertisement I've ever seen was a billboard on a highway from Georgia to Ohio. It was a dark color with obnoxiously bright pink lettering in a huge, bold, sans serif font that just said PEACHES Exit 318 and that was it. I was driving with my mother and we were ready for a snack so we stopped. It was a little farm stand with various produce and we bought a box of picked-that-day, sun ripe Georgia summer peaches and they were one the best goddamn things I've ever eaten. We almost turned around just to get more haha.

Yeah. Do I buy it just from their marketing? No. Have I bought things that I found as ads? Absolutely. Advertising has a legitimate purpose.

Beginning of COVID, wanting some way to spend time outdoors, I saw an ad for a small wood-fired pizza oven. Clicked it, liked it, ordered it on a whim even though it was $$$. It took my pizza game up a mile, looks cool, and has held up great. Legitimately one of my favorite possessions. 100% would click again.

Years ago when I use to go Anime News Network daily I would click on some ads because they only allowed relevant ads and found some great sites to buy anime stuff from. Yesterday I clicked on an ad for a Kickstarter because I was curious. I've clicked on ads and rarely I end up buying stuff, but have bought after I verified it was a legit site, but mostly I clicked on ads out of curiosity because it a cool design or idea. Ads are not inherently bad. The pervasiveness, intrusiveness, and scams are the problems. When ads were a banner at the top of a page and were relevant to the site they were ok. I miss those. I won't purposely click on pop up or over ads or in between paragraphs ads, but I do sometimes click on obviously ads that are not aggressive that are interesting.

One time, I was shopping for a specific item. I couldn't find it on ebay, Amazon, walmart or etsy. Then I went to some smaller retail site (they also didn't have it), and an Amazon ad for that item popped up. I clicked the ad, and it took me to the item page.

Amazon search (at least at the time) was so ineffective that I couldn't find it, while their ad data gathering was so complete they knew that I wanted that specific thing.

I once saw an ad for a cool hoodie on Instagram. I bought it. It was from China. Hoodie was trash, material was made from what you expect from a Halloween costume. Never again.

Nope. Never.

I've never clicked an ad, but that doesn't mean they were entirely ineffective. There have been a few times where I've seen an ad then went and searched for the product to find reviews and things.

Not a single time. I've only ever clicked them on shitty sites that shift things around while it loads.

I've clicked on ads "plenty of times" on purpose.

Probably a half dozen a year at one point.

There was a period of time where some sites I visited hit the sweet spot of only using advertisers that were moderately relevant to the content or to similar interests that people who would be perusing that content might have.

If the ads are for things I might be interested in, I'll click.

It's utterly shocking that with as much as most service providers and companies actually know about the average person that we've so thoroughly failed to target ads at people.

Couple that with ads being an occasional attack vector because nobody properly vets shit anymore and it's not worth it to whitelist most sites in my adblocker unless I'm REALLY interested in supporting them.

I avoid YouTube and that sort of stuff like the plague unless I need to repair an appliance or a car or something, so outside of text ads, the only ads I regularly see anymore are the occasional totally irrelevant commercial on a streaming service.

Once upon a time Hulu let you PICK what kind of ads you wanted to see, which was the tiniest of baby steps in the right direction.

We had the potential to drill down, do the hard work, and provide relevant, interesting, and specific ads, and the corporate fuckis at the top chose greed.

I almost feel bad for people who work in advertising.

A few of them.

Maybe.

Twice that I can think of.

Mealbars while on Slate Star Codex, and when I was a young weeb I clicked on a web store that sold Japanese items to Americans.

A couple of times. Basically one in a million. A whiskey event near me. A metal store selling steel bar stock.

I CLICK ON THEM ALL! 😈😈😈 (Using Ad Nauseam.)

I clicked on a porn add when I was a child. It shattered my world in a very good way

I once clicked an ad for syrinscape because it intrigued me. I ended up using it. Loyal customer ever since.

I clicked my on competitor 's just to make their waste their money.

I like clicking on ads for wish and aliexpress when I see something I have no idea what it is.

No, but after I blocked ads at the router, my spouse started complaining that they couldn’t open ads anymore. I disabled ad blocking in the router, but not without some level of consternation. I have ads blocked at the device level for all my devices so no harm done.

I clicked an ad for roblox in 2012 when i was a child. Probably the only ad i don't regret clicking on, accidentally or not.

I think I also might have clicked an ad on kongregate around that same time period.

Now I use an adblocker, so I can't really click on ads even if i wanted to

Probably. I'd like to think of myself as a person who haven't but having spent over 20 years on internet I feel like such a statement would almost certainly be wrong.

Adnausem clicks on all ads because that is how you mess your digital footprint.

Nope. And I remember a time when there weren't any ads. Or images for that matter. And I had to run software in DOS. Things are definitely both better and worse, now.

Yeah, saw a neat looking cat toy in an ad, and bought it.

It was an ad for a motorized ball about as big as a golf ball, lights up and kinda rolls/jumps around on its own as long as the cats nudge it. Eventually sleeps when they stop playing with it.

It is exactly as advertised, but the cats are only kinda interested in it. We still recharge it and put it out for them occasionally.

Instagram gets me every so often. I’m only on there for cannabis related stuff and they’ll hit me with cute pokemon figures or some shit. 💀

Yes, it happens from time to time.

We are not allowed to run an adblocker on company computers so I see ads when browsing the web, sometimes I see an ad for a cool product from my local camera shop that I want to learn more about, then I click the ad.

Lots of times, sometimes they are quite accurate to what I am interested in thanks to spyware. If I haven’t installed blocker yet or it broke and I see these nice shoes or whatever so I click click click

There used to be ads that took the form of games. I remember I'd be randomly browsing something like Marapets or some other Neopets knockoff and they'd show ads you can play, like I remember one where you could play as someone on a fourth story balcony dropping water balloons onto passerbies, and I'd think "wait, is this one of the site's games? Will I get myself points from this game to pay off Jhudora with?"

Now ads are just boring. Heck, where did all the i-frame veterans go?

Yes. It was on Sync for Lemmy.

It had a picture of John Lithgow and was mentioning art.

It turns out it was for his show on PBS about taking art classes in LA.

It was delightful.

Sorry can't hear you over the size of my GIGANTIC PENIS

I saw an ad on Facebook years ago for a Distant World's concert happening in my area. I clicked and bought tickets. This was the only time I've knowingly clicked an ad.

Sure, because it was my friend's computer and I thought it would be funny if he got more pop-ups for boner pills and also I was 12.