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Ask HN: Do you ever show appreciation to a site by clicking on Google Ads?

10 points by sga ↗ HN
I've been thinking about the merits of this type of action. It seems that in engaging in this type of behaviour you're diverting a portion of someones Adwords expenses to someone elses Adsense earnings with Google taking a nice sized cut. It seems unfair to the person running the Adwords campaign. But it does seem like the simplest way to quickly acknowledge someones work by sending them some Adsense revenue (even though it's peanuts). Any thoughts on this type of behaviour?

9 comments

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jasonlbaptiste
What I try to do is this:

If I enjoy the site, actually take time to look at the ads for something I'd want to learn about more. Then I'll click an ad. Sure I could just go clicking randomly, but that would be charging the advertiser for no value. At least this way, it's a win-win.

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lanstein
Yes. Not sure what more to say.
sga
I guess in asking my original question, I'm curious about peoples thoughts on the morality and ethics of this type of behaviour. In particular I'm curious if anyone is strongly against this for some reason I haven't thought of?

EDIT: also if people do this alot and there is a strong morality issue or legal issue it may mean that there's a need for this type of service (tipjoy ver. 2 perhaps)

awa
I try to treat clicking on an ad as an upvote to the story. If I can find something which seems interesting to click on that's another plus.
imp
No. It hurts the advertiser. Send an email to the website saying how much you appreciate what they do. That's worth a lot more than $0.30.
apowell
No, no, no. I don't, and you shouldn't.

A significant fraction of my income comes from Google Adsense, so this behavior would benefit me. However, I'm far more interested in the long-term health of the online advertising ecosystem, and I don't want it distorted by "click-tipping" at the advertiser's expense.

When I check my stats, I want to be confident that I've earned my money by delivering value to my advertisers -- not because a handful of well-meaning visitors decided to arbitrarily divert a few pennies from the advertiser's bank account to my own.

On the other hand, if an ad on my site is genuinely interesting to you, go ahead. After all, that's the whole point.

_0ffh
I click ads of organizations I don't like, just to make them pay. Does that make me a bad person now?
medianama
I always click on my competitor's ad, everytime I see it ;-)