Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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 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.

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.