A curious note on my own behaviour. I've been on the internet since...roughly 1993/94?
Reflecting on how I act, even back in the day "before ad-blockers", even if I saw an ad that seemed to link me to the place I wanted to go, I wouldn't click on it.
Instead I would open up a new window/tab, actively go to a search engine, search for the website/company/product I was interested in visiting (perhaps the one mentioned in the link/ad) and enter via their website/front door.
I think this is a behaviour I've picked up from the historically learning that banners/popups are just BAD NEWS...no exceptions. Like powerpoints, attachments or strange emails, I just have ingrained in me these things are not to be trusted and to not engage with them. Who knew where they're really taking you with their redirects, what they're doing, if they're really sending you where they say they are, or whether there's some hijack/virus/whatever. Back in the day, they were just generally something delivered from the seedier side of the internet: something to be avoided.
Nowdays, the seedier/annoying side of the internet has of course become the mainstream, but that's why we have ad-blockers.
I'm curious to know though, if I'm the only person who, through their own behaviour/history/preference, has been trained to go straight to the company/source/product rather than through an ad even when its presented to us...
Me too. Back in those days, they got paid per view. So it didn't matter if one click the ad. Nowadays most(?) ads are paid per click ("thanks" Google making that a thing). Those ads that follow you around aren't that fun at all, rather pretty creepy - the number one reason (I would say) that drive people to ad blockers. Another reason are ad overloaded sites that crash your mobile browser because of excessive memory usage.
You're not alone, I do the same. Anything living in the traditionally scuzzy bottom of article and right sidebar areas is guilty until proven otherwise. I'd be curious to see some research on this because I've actually had trouble finding things I was looking for when they were in traditionally bad screen real estate. When something does manage to seem interesting my assumption is that it's simply lying to me and won't take me to the thing I'm actually looking for. So rather than spend the extra time being disappointed and hitting ⌘+[ I just open the new tab and search.
I use vimium so I do occasionally fat-finger or mis-read a flag and end up following an ad.
I do the same thing, but I expect that advertisers have our number, in the same way that they track hits to their website when their TV ad or product placement runs in a market.
Reflecting on how I act, even back in the day "before ad-blockers", even if I saw an ad that seemed to link me to the place I wanted to go, I wouldn't click on it.
Instead I would open up a new window/tab, actively go to a search engine, search for the website/company/product I was interested in visiting (perhaps the one mentioned in the link/ad) and enter via their website/front door.
I think this is a behaviour I've picked up from the historically learning that banners/popups are just BAD NEWS...no exceptions. Like powerpoints, attachments or strange emails, I just have ingrained in me these things are not to be trusted and to not engage with them. Who knew where they're really taking you with their redirects, what they're doing, if they're really sending you where they say they are, or whether there's some hijack/virus/whatever. Back in the day, they were just generally something delivered from the seedier side of the internet: something to be avoided.
Nowdays, the seedier/annoying side of the internet has of course become the mainstream, but that's why we have ad-blockers.
I'm curious to know though, if I'm the only person who, through their own behaviour/history/preference, has been trained to go straight to the company/source/product rather than through an ad even when its presented to us...