Have you ever clicked on an ad on purpose?

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

Yes. When I search for a company name and their website is the first organic result, but they still bid on their own fucking name. I click that shit to cost them money for being stupid. That of course reinforces their marketing manager's opinion that they're doing a great job, but whatever. Waste all the money you want, I guess. It's pretty ridiculous how inefficient big companies can be and still make massive amounts of money.

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 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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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. 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.

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

So, no, I did not

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.

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'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.

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

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

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, 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The old spice commercials with Terry Crews were absurdly hilarious.

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

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

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..."

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.

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.

No. Ads are essentially scams.

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"

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)_/¯

Yes, many times.

Permanently Deleted

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Occasionally, if it is something I am interested in.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Nope. Never.

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.

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. 💀

site-native ads, yes.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.