HN Explorer

Poll: Do you click on advertising?

28 points by jacquesm ↗ HN
The '8% of the users are responsible for 85% of the clicks' title may be linkbait supreme, there definitely is something interesting to be found out there. I know HN is not exactly representative of the public at large, but still, do you click on ads?

52 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 93.8 ms ] thread
kschua
It depends. If the advertising is interesting enough, I will click it. For me, it is about once in two months that something interesting catches my eye
gnosis
I wonder how many people click ads for ideological reasons or out of a feeling of sympathy for the person who runs the site, rather than a need for the product advertised.

It would also be interesting to see ad clicking behavior broken down by socioeconomic status and education level.

eccp
I do. If I visit an anime fansub site or tracker, sometimes I click on the ads just to help the guys to pay their hosting or to say 'thanks for your effort', without actually wiring them some money from my own pocket.
gnosis
You might be interested in reading this:

http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/11/columns/guest/winter/ind...

and the subsequent discussion on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049105

danudey
For anyone lacking either the time or the inclination to read the entire article and ensuing discussion:

Clicking on a Google ad and then leaving the target site is considered click fraud. If an account has too much of this activity, it gets suspended, immediately, forever, and the advertiser not only loses money that hasn't been paid out, but can also have cheques that were issued but not cashed already revoked. Many ad networks behave the same or similarly.

If you and a lot of users click on ads you're not actually interested in, you're scamming the advertiser on behalf of the site. The site you're on gains (maybe) ten cents while the advertiser loses (maybe) a dollar.

Send the site a dollar instead, they'll make a lot more and they stand to lose a lot less. Send them twenty bucks and put them in your ad blocker and they'll come out on top. Click their ads 'to give them money' and they could lose thousands of dollars.

noelchurchill
I believe that 8% of visitors account for 85% of clicks metric is for display advertising, if I remember correctly.

So you need to define what types of ads your talking about.

jacquesm
All ads, across the board. I think that's actually more interesting because 'display ads' is a term that refers to more traditional forms of online advertising and I'd like to include keyword ads and all other forms in there as well, anything that entices you to click on it and that has been placed there for a third party is fair game.
lsc
eh, I think 'display ads' are a bit different. When I buy ads, I buy display ads. My intent is not to get you to click and buy right now; My intent is for you to remember my name. To know I exist. and so next time you want the product or service I am selling you tell yourself "Oh, I have heard of this guy." rather than writing me off as a fly by night.

So, for me, the click through rate doesn't really matter all that much. Which is good, because my target market, generally speaking, doesn't click ads.

ximeng
It's a bit of a sliding scale. Are affiliate links like those used on hipmunk or Skyscanner ads? Amazon affiliate links? Cross links to other blogs that wordpress plugins add automatically? Job adverts on Stackoverflow? Links to the blogs of people who answer questions on stackoverflow? Blogrolls?

I sometimes only realise a link is an affiliate when my hosts file blocks a 3rd party advertiser. It's impossible to know in general who has paid money for what links to third party sites and what agreements are in place behind the scenes. Half the time people probably don't even know they're clicking on ads.

panacea
I often use Google rather than bookmarks to get to a less-frequented site I want to visit and knowingly click the sponsored text ad at the top of the search results, thinking "should probably throw a few pennies Google's way for the utility they afford my life".

Does that count?

axod
> "All ads, across the board."

Ah so that includes adverts that are just affiliate linkes, or paid links, and all the billions of other things which don't look like adverts?

What about all the adverts on HN, like the 37signals "article" today which was an advert for Tim Ferris' book?

How about if you've done a search on DuckDuckGo and clicked on an amazon link? Oops, you just clicked on an advert.

Reminds me of an episode of "Brasseye" where they show a graph over time of "Crimes we know nothing about" and it's increasing ;)

It all depends on your definition of "advert", but if you say "I never click on adverts", either you mean you don't click on things that obviously look like adverts (Display advertising), or you're extremely naive.

stcredzero
Reminds me of an episode of "Brasseye" where they show a graph over time of "Crimes we know nothing about" and it's increasing ;)

"Clever" -- as in thinks it's clever but actually highlights a misconception. Such a graph could refer to unreported crimes, which can be estimated through sampling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)

carl_
Only if it's a competitors advert or something I'm actually interested in.
dhimes
Happy 1000!
dhimes
Checking his profile it's his 1000th day on HN.
pclark
The only adverts I've ever clicked are The Deck adverts.
mooism2
I click on search engine ads sometimes, usually when I'm looking to buy something.

But display ads? Only by accident.

citricsquid
I would think "out of principle" would matter too. I know multiple people who refuse to click adverts, not because they're uninterested, but because they "hate" adverts. Never because they never like anything and never because they refuse are different, although I guess they don't matter too much to the advertisers/publishers, but it'd be an interesting metric.
mcritz
Ironically, I use custom css to hide many ads. Yet, I click on many ads from The Deck & Fusion Ads. I suppose they appeal to my personality.
jacquesm
That's the second time 'The Deck' gets mentioned in this thread, if you're wondering (like I was) what it is about there is more info here: http://decknetwork.net/
Detrus
Yea I only click on The Deck and similar ad formats once a month. They have relevant content for designers and developers. The landing pages are usually fast and simple HTML, no fancy flash with preloaders. The format requires the display ad to be the one and only one on the page. Also it is a small jpg, not Flash, so it loads faster and doesn't slow down browsing.

Just demonstrating that display ads can work when they're properly executed. iAds are a similar story.

Qz
I usually have AdBlock on, but it was off temporarily when I installed Windows 7, during which time I clicked an ad for a TV show that looked interesting. Turned out to be an awesome TV show. I'm still not going to turn AdBlock off though.
phirephly
I blindly click ads on websites I like, once I realized the stupidly high amount click-throughs pay ($0.10-$1.50 per click from Google Ads)
ido
Don't do that. The money doesn't come out of thin air, the advertiser pays it while getting nothing in return.
gnosis
Ethical issues aside, if the advertisers see lots of clicks but no buys coming from a site, they could simply stop advertising on that site (or, worse, report the site for potential click fraud).

If you a like a website, a much better strategy is to simply send the site you like money, buy something directly from the site you like, or (least helpfully) actually buy the item an advertiser is selling after clicking through their ad on the site you like.

JoeAltmaier
Wait - its ok to game the heck out of advertising placement, but a single guy decides to game the other way and he's doing something wrong?

The ad is there, its my pageview, I'll click on anything I please, thank you very much.

<edit - remove profanity>

ido
It's not just because he is doing "something wrong", it's mostly because he isn't really helping the site he wants to help as gnossis pointed above.
JoeAltmaier
Of course he's helping - they get money when he clicks.
ido
He is helping in the short run and might be harming in the long run.

Read the aforementioned comment.

JoeAltmaier
Read it all, thank you.

And the only known is, they get money when he clicks. The rest is speculation and straw-men.

_0ffh
I tend to click specifically to transfer money from advertiser to website owner. Mostly because I like the website, sometimes because I dislike the advertiser - when I'm lucky I get to get both with one click! =)
Dramatize
The only ads I click on are the ones from the premium ad networks.
joeyh
Always.

(But with the right mouse button, shortly before selecting "Adblock".)

jrockway
Just use a filter subscription and you won't even have to do this.
mkr-hn
I almost never click contextual ads, but affiliate links are another matter. They're usually done in a more tasteful way than most random ad blocks.
bkrausz
According to ComScore only about 16% of internet users ever click on ads, and half of those clickers account for 85% of all ad clicks (i.e. they're constant ad clickers).

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/10/...

nl
That study is only for banner/display advertising, not search advertising. It's not even clear if it counts contextual text ads.
dustingetz
I'm 25 white male with a college degree and a good job.

I and almost all of my friends are on Groupon.

CPops
I'm surprised that a community of internet entrepreneurs is so disinterested in advertising considering how many of your own sites are dependent on it.

I actually like looking at ads. I like finding out about new products and trying to find a good deal. I don't like to use ad-blockers. If a site has too many ads and loads too slowly, I simply won't visit there.

The key though, is having a tasteful amount of advertising. There's nothing worse than loading up a site with a dozen slow-loading ads that makes your system slow down. Look at Reddit as a great example of how to advertise. One text ad and one picture ad per page.

Facebook has 2-4 ads per page, which is sometimes a bit much, but at least they load fast. The problem with Facebook ads though are that despite knowing everything about everybody, the ads on Facebook are pathetically horrible.

pbhjpbhj
>I'm surprised that a community of internet entrepreneurs is so disinterested in advertising considering how many of your own sites are dependent on it.

I followed a Facebook ad the other day - it was some really spammy looking marriage guidance ad and I wanted to see if it was as fraudulent as I guessed it was going to be. They used every trick in the book, a very long audio intro with what this was going to do for you including an excellent push for a high price expectation and some logical sounding smack talk about opposing options. Good calls to action, strong pressure sell. You could write a marketing lecture on it.

Obviously didn't have any thought of buying. To me it looked as close to being a con as you can come without being illegal, all advertised direct through Facebook.

Also occasionally I'll look at a spam site (from email spam) to see where it originated or who might be behind it.

>Look at Reddit as a great example of how to advertise. One text ad and one picture ad per page.

Reddit beg their readership for money as well. I'm not really sure it's as great an example as first appears.

>ads on Facebook are pathetically horrible

See above. Also I keep telling them that Farmville, Townville, Zombieville, etc., etc. aren't interesting to me but they keep showing me the same ads.

axod
> I'm surprised that a community of internet entrepreneurs is so disinterested in advertising considering how many of your own sites are dependent on it.

An interesting poll would be how many of us generate revenue from ads.

HN has traditionally been pretty vocal about its dislike of advertising and belief that advertising will die off etc

minouye
For the nevers, if you are running any sort of online business and you don't investigate competitors ads/ads in your space, you are doing your business a huge disservice. I am not endorsing click fraud--I am merely saying that if you don't know what ad copy/banners your competitors are using or what landing pages they are directing traffic to, then you have blinders on.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like its analogous to Burger King saying, "We never watch McDonald's commercials because we would never buy anything from them."

genieyclo
I'm one of those weird people with 10,000+ lines in /etc/hosts mostly filled with ad servers and agencies.

  wc /etc/hosts
  13381  28071 387932 /etc/hosts
kingofspain
Google ads - never. They are invariably 'spam' keyword regexes & when they aren't, I usually see the same site in natural results below. Out of politeness Ill click that and not cost them anything.

Other ads, banners & whatnot I tend to not really notice any more. Except groupon ads which tend to always have a photo of some delicious cake. Their actual daily offers are always spa treatments though :(

barrkel
If I happen to see an ad for something that I like, I will go so far as to do a separate Google search for it, and click on the search result, to avoid clicking on the ad.

This has the added benefit of not ending up on a specifically crafted landing page, plus making visible other research options, opinions, etc.

david_shaw
The downside, of course, is that if you're on a web site that is ad supported, you are taking away from the profitability of the site you do like.

I try to click on ads (WHEN RELEVANT) instead of completely avoiding them no matter what.

If you really never want to click an ad, have you considered using Adblock?

barrkel
Sure, I use AdBlock, and OptimizeGoogle, and Ghostery, and a bunch of other things (e.g. disabling flash, silverlight, java, animations, etc., and occasional custom greasemonkey scripts) to live a life without distractions, except when I opt into them.
danudey
I didn't see an option for 'Occasionally, by accident', so I went with 'rarely'. I recall in the past having seen an ad that was legitimately interesting, so I can't say never, but I can't recall the last time it happened.
jsz0
Nope, never on purpose. I have a deep mistrust of advertising in general. I'm more likely not to buy a product/service if it's advertised to me.
aDemoUzer
I use AdBlock. If I ever do come across ads, like in videos, I usually don't even watch the video in order to avoid the ad or turn the volume to mute while the ad is running.