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Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

Most people don't think like this. People click on ads every day. millions of clicks. That doesn't help them get the cheese, it helps them find out about new cool products they didn't know about. Those adverts are useful to them. They are glad to have adverts.

That's why people who block ads stand at 6% of firefox users, which amounts to maybe 2% of total users. Hardly worth worrying too much about.

It's like the people who tell you every second how they haven't owned a TV for years, yet fail to grasp the fact they're nothing like the average joe.

For some reason adblock users seem to consider themselves as 'early adopters'. They're not.

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"Most people"? Really? I think you should read this: http://www.smvgroup.com/news_popup_flash.asp?pr=1643

"Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000," the study said, and they "are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers."

"heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks."

Sure doesn't sound like most people...

A lot of advertisers don't want to reach those people though. They want to get their brand in front of influential 20-somethings, not to get clicks, but to generate brand awareness.

Most people don't think like this.

Mice don't think like this either. The ones thinking are the maze builders.

Hypothetical: if I were to tell you that, say, 75% of the net ad revenue on many ad networks was generated by clicks on ads served by adware and spyware, but only, say, 15% of total ad impressions were served by adware and spyware, would you revise your reasoning as to how useful the clickers are finding the ads?

We're not discussing adware/spyware. And no, I wouldn't revise my thoughts. All you've said is the obvious - adware+spyware is very effective at generating revenue. Obviously more effective than unobtrusive advertising mingled in with website content.

edit: still not sure I quite understand your point here (Or why the downmods). You're saying that adware/spyware generates lots of revenue for ad networks. What does that have to do with the usefulness of advertising on websites?

The connection is this:

Hypothesis A: ads are useful, people click on them b/c they deliberately want more info.

Hypothesis B: ads are useless, people click on them only when they are somehow tricked into doing so.

It's obviously the case that out of the set of ad-clickers some are type A and some are type B; the interesting question is the composition of the ad-clicking population.

What follows depends on how you interpret adware and spyware clicks: are they clicked mostly out of confusion (b/c the demographic that has adware/spyware-infected computers tends to be the elderly and other "unsavvy" people) or mostly b/c they're useful to the clicker?

Depending on how you do your weightings you might have to revise down the % of type-A clicks that're going on (and revise it down again to take various kinds of clickfraud into account).

I can't actually tell you if those stats are accurate: I've overheard figures like that from people who might know, but figure they're mostly disgruntled employees exaggerating for effect, so I tend to discount the testimony somewhat.

My evidence is mainly my own - I've made money off online advertising for 10 years now. I've never had to trick anyone into clicking on adverts. They do so because they find them useful.

Even if it's true that you haven't tricked people into clicking on them, without further evidence it's hard to say if your clicks are because people find them useful or because people get confused.

http://www.mibbit.com/chat/ (Adverts top right). I don't think that's very confusing.

The thing is, the people clicking on the "Free Ipod Touch!!!" </blink> are genuinely interested in the result. They also may not understand the implication of such "FREEE!!!" offers.

Remember, the people seeing the adware are the ones who clicked on bonzai buddy in the first place, and/or don't realize the adware on their machine.

These are also the people that don't think there's going to have any trouble canceling that free offer.

(An aside: one of the darkest, most depressing times in my life was working in online advertising. I lasted 6 months.)

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