Just as the title says: Have you ever clicked on an ad, knowing it was an ad, on purpose? What ad was it? Why did you click it?
Curious because I realized I have not once in my life clicked on an ad shown online on purpose. Accidentally, and being tricked into clicking the wrong thing sure; never with intent though.
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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:
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I have an unhealthy hatred of advertising.
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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.
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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.
Same for me, on occasion I’ve discovered decent games by clicking on the ads on mobile. Since I know it’s going to open up the play store, it doesn’t feel as sketchy.
However, the vast majority of the time I back out after taking a look at the game page.
I was thinking “no” but, yeah, Steam Store front page. Almost every time I launch, I take a moment to see what’s good today.
But apart from that, I can’t think of a time though it’s probably happened once or twice over the years. At best, some brand’s ad looks like a good idea, so I start searching the market,and if I buy, you can be guaranteed it ended up being from a competitor.
Yeah, I click them Steam sale ads all the time.
Turns out when the ads are for things I want, at good prices and without all the nag and malware, they’re beneficial for both consumer and advertiser. Advertising used to be a useful tool for both parties.
But enshitification must continue.
Yeah I’m usually way more willing to click ads that are for something on the website I’m already on than for something somewhere else
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.
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
“we have a billion people interested in our ad campaign!”
“wait why is it coming from just one ip?”
What can I say. He really got me. 🤷🏼♂️
Spoiler
Yeah, first to mind is when I know the product or company already. Like an outdoor equipment store had a sale two weeks back. They have this sale every year and I was waiting for it to buy a couple specific things. An ad reminded me that it had started so I clicked thru it. Of course double checking the URL to make sure it actually took me to the store site and wasn’t some scam.
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.
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?
Yeah that’s why I choose my words carefully. Ads disguised as download buttons have existed basically as long as piracy has. lol
🏴☠️Aaarrrgh matey, choose this chest. Thar be plenty o’ booty to be had. 🦜
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.
Ha nice follow through!
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
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.
They often do that to own more positions on the results page, and you don’t get to see their competition without scrolling or clicking on the next page.
Isn’t it dumb that if I Google “Amazon” the top result is their ad and the next is the same link without the ad? Would make way more sense for the Amazon’s ad to be the top result if I googled “Wal-Mart”
If they don’t bid for that spot, couldn’t a fraudulent (or at least competing) site take it?
I’ve seen that happen for open source stuff
If you become their costumer - joke’s on you, because now you are paying them to pay Google.
They were going to do that anyways. At least now I get my meaningless petty rebellion.
Adnausem clicks on all ads because that is how you mess your digital footprint.
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.
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.
