I have no idea why anyone would click on any ad anywhere other than by accident, not knowing if the link might take them to some malware site these days.
I would never click on the weird ads that the supposedly "brightest minds of our generation" have delivered to me via some nonsensical middleman auction system.
But I go to some blogs (philosophy, jazz, and men's clothing) that have ads that are literally just image links. The ads are actually relevant to the content, and because I go to the blog of my own volition, that means that more often than not the ads are at least somewhat relevant and usually worth a look, like the curated ones you see in a magazine. Most other ads online are so irrelevant it's almost comical, and I have no idea why people pay to use those services. All these tech giants who make enormous sums of money from advertising are emperors with no clothes - a hard look at the quality of their product reveals it's unanimously considered garbage by the public. Their promise of delivering hyper targeted advertisement was obviously a lie predicated on market capture and becoming the only middlemen in town.
I agree, before the age of enshittification, when I went to actual blogs, sometimes I did see ads worth my time. But these days most blogs I would visit are hosted on sites that just use ad farms, and the targeting is awful (which, hey, I am on my apple devices most of the time and I disable all tracking) but mostly I would never feel confident that clicking the ad wouldn't bring me to some spyware infested hole. I am far more leery of where I would go when I click it than I am concerned that I'm not the target demographic.
I clicked on a couple ads once because I was desperate - I needed a cheap flight with a tight deadline and my usual search engines didn't help. I thought "if these ads deliver what they promise, I'll never book anywhere else".
Sometimes (I especially notice this on the App Store, but sometimes Google), companies bid on their own name. So you'll search something like "Discord" and the first result will be an ad for Discord, and then below is the organic results which has them first anyways.
I have bid in Google Adwords on my own product name. If you don't, then a competitor else might, and then they will appear above you in search. It isn't nice, but that is the way it is.
I have wondered why this happens for awhile now. I had no idea - I feel like if a product name matches exactly what I searched for, no ad should ever be ABOVE that match. It makes me a tad angry you guys have to pay to get this behavior.
Comments
I have no idea why anyone would click on any ad anywhere other than by accident, not knowing if the link might take them to some malware site these days.
I would never click on the weird ads that the supposedly "brightest minds of our generation" have delivered to me via some nonsensical middleman auction system.
But I go to some blogs (philosophy, jazz, and men's clothing) that have ads that are literally just image links. The ads are actually relevant to the content, and because I go to the blog of my own volition, that means that more often than not the ads are at least somewhat relevant and usually worth a look, like the curated ones you see in a magazine. Most other ads online are so irrelevant it's almost comical, and I have no idea why people pay to use those services. All these tech giants who make enormous sums of money from advertising are emperors with no clothes - a hard look at the quality of their product reveals it's unanimously considered garbage by the public. Their promise of delivering hyper targeted advertisement was obviously a lie predicated on market capture and becoming the only middlemen in town.
I agree, before the age of enshittification, when I went to actual blogs, sometimes I did see ads worth my time. But these days most blogs I would visit are hosted on sites that just use ad farms, and the targeting is awful (which, hey, I am on my apple devices most of the time and I disable all tracking) but mostly I would never feel confident that clicking the ad wouldn't bring me to some spyware infested hole. I am far more leery of where I would go when I click it than I am concerned that I'm not the target demographic.
I clicked on a couple ads once because I was desperate - I needed a cheap flight with a tight deadline and my usual search engines didn't help. I thought "if these ads deliver what they promise, I'll never book anywhere else".
Believe it or not, they did not deliver.
Sometimes (I especially notice this on the App Store, but sometimes Google), companies bid on their own name. So you'll search something like "Discord" and the first result will be an ad for Discord, and then below is the organic results which has them first anyways.
I have bid in Google Adwords on my own product name. If you don't, then a competitor else might, and then they will appear above you in search. It isn't nice, but that is the way it is.
I have wondered why this happens for awhile now. I had no idea - I feel like if a product name matches exactly what I searched for, no ad should ever be ABOVE that match. It makes me a tad angry you guys have to pay to get this behavior.
It must be lovely to be that innocent. ;0)