Most people here seem to think that one clicks ads only by accident. If this were true such clicks would never lead to a purchase or just associate a brand with annoyance. I simply can't believe that. Sure, mostly, I see ads for stuff I have just purchased, sometimes for months but there also have been useful ones from time to time for me (mostly home automation/Raspberry Pi stuff), also my brain seems wired not to ignore such ads.
Aren't geeks missing out by ignoring things targeted specifically to them (us)? Are geeks just stubborn? If you say things like "we get a better deal because stupid ad clickers pay for our internet experience", you are completely missing the fact that such an ad clicker probably made a valuable discovery through an ad, one that was even worth real money!
Do most HN-ers really believe all ads are fraudulent rip-offs designed to trick us just into clicking on them? Sure some are, but people here seem to think they all are.
The problem is there is no filtering, thanks to having a paying customer (ad maker), and then horrible ads get shown. And they slow my experience down, take over my website, use technologies that can infect my otherwise uninfected computers, and confuse me when I want to click download.
I learned from an early age that every single ad was essentially evil. All of it was a trick to get me to click something I did not want. Maybe, if they hadn't done that (and if they had ever really stopped... cause they haven't) I wouldn't have Privacy Bader, uBlock, and Disconnect running all at once.
In the beginning all I had wanted to do was get actual information on a topic or download the latest version of something for Windows. And every time I see someone not running highly aggressive adblockers I can understand why they think somethings on the internet are so complicated. "Just google it" -> "Yea, and click which irrelevant ad which takes up the whole first fold of the page on my not Retina MBP?"
Personally, I've never discovered anything specifically from an ad worth purchasing, but I have found interesting things to purchase after an advert inspired me to research a topic further.
Frankly, your comment reads as someone whose livelihood depends on advertising.
I also hate ads in general, my livelihood certainly does not depend on them. But there are sometimes ads that are useful. This must almost be the case as ads (excluding punch the monkey-like ads) try to be useful.
Well, according to the numbers SF people do click ads from time to time. I just can't imagine all ad clicks to be by accident and so by definition not all ads are useless. So maybe HN-ers that never click ads and always ignore them, do miss out.
> Do most HN-ers really believe all ads are fraudulent rip-offs designed to trick us just into clicking on them?
Some ads are pushing adware, malware or worse, for sure. And some AdSense ads are designed to look like search results, to trick people looking for Chrome or whatever. But even honest ads are designed to trick us into buying stuff that we hadn't planned on. Or to trick us into impulse buying, without proper research, reading product reviews, asking friends, and so on.
Aren't geeks missing out by ignoring things targeted specifically to them (us)? Are geeks just stubborn? If you say things like "we get a better deal because stupid ad clickers pay for our internet experience", you are completely missing the fact that such an ad clicker probably made a valuable discovery through an ad, one that was even worth real money!
Do most HN-ers really believe all ads are fraudulent rip-offs designed to trick us just into clicking on them? Sure some are, but people here seem to think they all are.