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Comment by bagacrap | Hacker News Reader

Non-technical users can't read the bolded "Ad" in the top left? Ok, it's more subtle than before but it doesn't prey on the less sophisticated among us.

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For one, that Ad logo spent about two years being yellow-on-white, so people without well-tuned contrast monitors couldn't see it at all.

Last year they made a change that made them so indistinguishable to the untrained eye that even Google rolled them back: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/google-will-iterate-the-desi...

But no, generally, they don't notice that. Studies have been done demonstrating how few users can tell the difference between an ad and a search result. In one study, half of respondents "didn't spot" ads in Google search results at all: https://www.123-reg.co.uk/blog/seo-2/how-google-is-profiting...

That study was in 2013, when Ads were much more obvious in search results than they are today. By 2018, the statistic of people who couldn't identify search ads on Google was up closer to two-thirds: https://marketingtechnews.net/news/2018/sep/06/two-thirds-pe...

it normally takes me 1 sentence max to realise i've clicked on an ad by mistake. I think even if there was no ad shin i would still manage to work out what is promoted content. If ads ever stops being generic, irrelevant clickbait, we might have a problem on our hands. But that particular danger doesn't seem to be very likely at all.

> it normally takes me 1 sentence max to realise i've clicked on an ad by mistake.

Good thing that has no cost, then. Especially with how poorly optimized all the javascript on these pages is, slowing loading to a perceptible crawl (unless, perhaps again, if you’re in the bubble where every machine you use is latest flagship android or a workstation, blind to the experience of the less ‘sophisticated’ users).

It sounds crazy, but they really can’t. Seriously, have you ever been over a non tech person’s shoulder while they are googling? They click the first thing they see with zero scrutiny.

I have an incredible number of personal anecdotes to offer about not just watching ordinary users click on ads, but also Google Ads being the primary source for most scams and malware on the Internet, that Google pushes to the top of their results for money. (When you have helped dozens of seniors taken advantage of by scammers that Google profited off of, it's hard to be particularly amicable about the company and their business practices.)

However, I went with showing studies because unfortunately, our personal real world experiences rarely win online arguments. ;)

Watch a non-nerd use Google. They 100% do click on those ads without realizing they're ads. Constantly. I wouldn't be surprised if most ad-clicks for Google are performed by people having no clue they're clicking on an ad.

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