Ask Lemmy

An honest estimate, in the 25+ years I've been using the internet, I've probably clicked on things easily recognizable as ads on purpose less than 50 times. A lot of that was while shopping.

Nope, I'll even specifically avoid companies that I see or hear excessive ads for. When I needed to change car insurance a while back and had a list of options going, I immediately removed all the ones I could remember seeing advertising for.

Two reasons:

1. I have an unhealthy hatred of advertising.

2. They're spending an absurd amount of money on digital spam as opposed to making their product/service better or cheaper. Some percentage of what you pay for in the product is to cover their advertising campaigns, and I prefer that percentage be as small as possible.

I saw one about lonely moms available in my area and clicked because I’m an orphan.

I apologize in advance for that joke and I’m about to donate $100 to a local charity that works with orphans. If you laughed, I encourage you to do the same so we can turn my horrid, inexcusable joke into something positive.

Yeah once or twice. Usuallly to buy some cheap knickknacks that are shiny or that I think are cool.

i.e. I bought some Pokémon badges off a Facebook ad years ago.

My wife likes to click on ads she sees on instagram for products for presents and things. Stuff like a sunflower necklace that opens and says “you are my sunshine” on the inside of it.

She seems to actually like targeted ads because she is always looking for presents and things for people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you're talking about ads that look like ads, it's happened maybe twice since the mid 90s. But who knows how many ads disguised as content that any of us has ever clicked on?

Once.

It was in gmail (I think gmail used to have text ads?), for a local job, in my field, right when I was about to quit.

I got the job.

Whenever I have to use the Android Play Store and I search for the exact thing that I want and the first result is an ad for that thing, I click on the ad instead of the same item in the natural results just to cost them money.

I have purposely clicked on ads for some video games. It isn't worth the click even then since you end up on some marketing railroad that doesn't lead directly to the steam page.

Does it count if it was for a shitty company and I just wanted to drive up their ad costs? If so, yes. Otherwise, no. lol

I once saw an advertisement that is negative towards house building company, links to a news article.