Ask Lemmy

Yes, because I was wondering what kind of scam it is, and because the advertiser had to pay money for my click.

I once saw a nice sweater/some kinda outerwear thing with an excessive amount of pockets or something in a Youtube ad. For whatever reason I had been thinking that would be useful around that time, and did click to learn more.

I didn't buy it and don't even remember if it was exactly what I'm describing here, so efficacy was meh. This is the only one that jumps to mind.

Like a random intrusive ad? No, but when I Google something simply to go to their website and their ad is the top result I often decide if I like them more or less than Google before deciding to click the ad link vs the regular search link (I assume they pay Google a little extra for ad clicks). Amazon gets the ad click most others do not.

Occasionally, if it is something I am interested in.

The old spice commercials with Terry Crews were absurdly hilarious.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq2SlCja3zo&pp=ygUVdGVycnkgY3Jld3Mgb2xkIHNwaWNl

site-native ads, yes.

other ones that aren't even closely relevant then no.

I remember seeing an ad a few years back that said "Lower your phone bill with this genius device" or something equally inane and had a picture of a really old school 2 port USB hub that looked strange enough that nobody would recognize it as such. I'd long been curious about what these things actually advertised, so I clicked, just to find out where it went.

I was taken to a landing page about Cisco VoIP.

I'm not sure I envy the people trying to sell (or worse, be tech support for) VoIP phones to the sort of people who click on ad headlines that end with "With This One Weird Trick"

I haven't seen a single ad on any of my devices for more than 10 years

So, no, I did not

.

I make a point not to, so no. If I see something in an add that does interest me, I'll just go to the website myself.

I have. Rarely, I see an ad for something I'm interested in and I wanted more information. There have also been a few times that the ad was so ridiculous that I would click it just to see who paid for it and why. I do realize that's the whole point of those ads, but I have a very intrusive curiosity.

Admittedly I've clicked on a handful of interesting Youtube ads but not one in the past 5 years, so I can't remember what they were. I just don't really see Youtube ads unless I'm on a mobile device or I turn them on to help a creator get revenue, as I use a pretty strong adblocker on my PC. Don't snitch to Google about that though.

I'm a bit more sympathetic to Youtube ads since they are a revenue source for some of my favorite creators, as much as I hate the way Youtube goes about it. Never clicked on any other ads besides these though.

to provide an answer from the advertiser’s perspective, they are very aware that the Click Through Rate (CTR) is incredibly low, as corroborated by the comments, actually measured at about 0.2%.

because it’s so small and potentially difficult to track, other metrics besides CTR are used alongside by marketers, including total impressions, conversion rates between other channels and, yes, tracing your browsing history by way of cookies and other invasive digital tools.

Yes!

Probably a couple of times a year, some interesting product will catch my eye. It doesn't necessarily mean I'd be willing to buy the product. The last thing I clicked on was a yarbo ad. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay 5 to 10 grand for a robot tractor, but to be honest the thing looks pretty cool. I watch the entire ad did a quick search for pricing and what about my day. Now I'll probably see 420,000 different ads for it but that's okay it still looks pretty cool.

Depends on what you classify as an ad.

Ive started watching the series Long Way Round, which is essentially an ad for BMW.

I click on steam sale ads for video games.

When local stores have sales, they have ads for those sales on their websites which I click on from time to time - recently I was shopping for a soundbar and a local store was having a sale on soundbars so I clicked that ad on their website.

When ads aren't too intrusive, and they're relevant, and they're not peddling garbage I don't have too much of a problem with them

All the time. If it's a company I dislike and I see them advertising on Google, I know I'm costing them money. Google uses an auction house system for ads, so common words can have a lot of competition. You could be making that company pay a dollar or more for that click, and at the same time contribute to a headache for their marketers who are keeping a close eye on their cost per click and customer acquisition costs.

Yeah, google wins in this scenario too, but there's not much I can do about that.

Yes, sometimes I see something that looks interesting and click to learn more. But I think more often than not I'll just open an incognito window and search for it instead of clicking on the ad.

Yup! The ones I clicked with genuine motives were all Project Wonderful ads. Project Wonderful was an ad service that catered specifically to creative projects, mainly webcomics. People running webcomics would host a Project Wonderful ad widget on their site to make a little extra money, and when they had some money to burn they'd pay to have ads for their own comic run on other people's sites. I often discovered fun new comics this way. It's the only ad service I've ever actually appreciated. I was sad when they shut down.

I've also clicked some other ads in an un-genuine manner. These were all advertisements for dresses, swimsuits, skirts, etc. The purpose here was to convince the advertising agencies to stop plastering random shit all over the internet and instead decorate it with a bunch of pretty clothes and sometimes pretty models wearing those clothes. Worked pretty well, as long as I remembered to click an ad or two every few months.

I haven't done this in a while though. I wound up house-sitting for family members a lot in the last couple years, meaning I'd end up stuck using my laptop for a few days or a week instead of my real computer. The laptop has a lot less ram and runs into problems browsing the web sometimes due to ad company programmers being incompetent fuckwits who write leaky code. I finally got fed up with this and installed uBlock Origin on my laptop to make it more usable while away from home.

That was all I'd intended to do; I was fine coexisting with most ads on my desktop and just using custom scripting to nuke individual specific ad slots that were being nuisances (e.g. jerking the page around on wikis I frequented). But since I have Firefox set up to synchronize between my laptop and desktop, I incidentally wound up with uBlock Origin on my desktop as well. I'm not sure if there's a way to have that be asymmetric while still having all the other browser extensions continue to synchronize (because I would prefer if websites kept getting paid for my traffic when I browse on PC, especially webcomics), but for now I've just happily enjoyed not having ads anymore. The internet is so much more peaceful this way. Though I do sometimes miss all the pretty dresses.

No. Ads are essentially scams.

I have clicked on political ads for the other team, so they get charged for clicks. Petty, I know

Only for things I was planning on purchasing beforehand and happened to see a sale had started. So the ad saved me from waiting and actively watching for a sale since I don't create accounts for every company I purchase from.

Yeah, I click them Steam sale ads all the time.

Yes. Sometimes I click the ads of companies I hate so they have to spend more money not selling me something.

It probably means I will see more of their ads, but I usually opt out of personalized ads so maybe not so much?

Yes, many times.

Yes, but its rare, and even more rare will I buy something.

If I see an ad for something that im actually in the market for, and I want to support the person that runs the page or presents the video, and I know that the person is going to get a kickback if I decide to spend money, then yeah, I'll click their referral link and shop around.

Yes.

A starlink one for a cheap installation kit many months ago. (but since moved to 5G)

Several others over the years, mostly via Facebook.

Only a moron let's a free iPad get away especially since I was that days randomly selected winner. Anyways I have a new social security number now.

I'm sure I have once or twice over the years. I block ads as much as possible now, though, using multiple methods.

Never, but clicks aren't their only goal. They're planting info in your mind. "Who should I call about auto repair? Well, I've heard a million ads for Leif's, guess I'll try them..."