Tell HN: I never bought anything from clicking on a paid ad

19 points by julienreszka 2 days ago|22 comments

I really wonder who clicks ads

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MSKJ 9 hours ago

What toothpaste do you buy? or shoes, or medicine? Your friends? I've bought Advil and generic Ibuprofen. Same with other known brands of general products.

Maybe not always or even mostly but when tired or getting the basics humans tend to go for what they recognize.

Especially noticeable when travelling and there are choices we are not used to seeing and we see the one brand we recognize.

Making the ads clickable is utilizing the real estate.

(scams that rely on you clicking for nefarious purposes are just scammers being scammers, there will always be scams)

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farseer 3 hours ago

But you definitely have bought an item you have seen in a paid ad LATER.

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al_borland 2 days ago

Nor have I, I’ve never even willing clicked on an ad, but I see countless others do it when I watch over their shoulder.

I’ve also seen seemingly normal people argue in favor of user tracking and data harvesting so they could get ads that were more relevant to them. They claimed they genuinely found them useful.

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dlcarrier 2 days ago

I was helping a family member find something on Amazon, and she was extremely frustrated that I was fighting their their only semi-functional sorting, to find an actually good product, instead of just clicking on the ads and paying more to buy something worse, instead of spending 15 minutes finding something that would do what we need.

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KomoD 6 hours ago

I don't think I've bought anything directly from clicking an ad either, but I think just seeing those ads has probably still influenced us subconsciously in some way.

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willmeyers 9 hours ago

People do all the time. On Instagram/TikTok/Facebook they've gotten pretty good at hiding whether something is an ad with videos plus very good content creation. Ads are not what they used to be 10 years ago. People not as adept to these shady tactics fall for it all the time.

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jaredsohn 4 hours ago

I learned about Tile via ads in its early days and then eventually bought it.

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teknopaul 17 hours ago

I don't think that is necessarily the point.

Its about brand recognition they don't really expect you to click just to know that they exist, and are an option when it comes to decision time.

Naturally they have a click to purchase option

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ferguess_k 18 hours ago

Actually I did once. I forgot which ads it was, but it was something I genuinely wanted. But yeah, usually I don't bother with ads and just turns them off.

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lordkrandel 2 days ago

I have bought advertised things, but never through the platform. Like, I discovered The Vegan Butcher, Ohuhu alcohol markers, and a Tatoo convention. All things I would have known also through Google. Is that enough to sustain a 24/7 economy based on ads? What's the real ROI? Who spends that much money buying stuff from socials?

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j5dgx76 2 days ago

I have never performed a religioua ritual yet I see religion everywhere.

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aristofun 22 hours ago

That is a pretty stupid comment and a bad analogy, to be honest

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aristofun 22 hours ago

Everyone outside our professional community.

Only people who make sausages don’t eat them. Only people who create news don’t trust them.

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skyberrys 20 hours ago

This makes me wonder why the AI economy is considered a bubble when we already did an advertising supported internet as a bubble. The whole ad supported internet seemed to have such low drivers of revenue to the advertisers (at least as far as I can tell without people clicking on ads), compared to today's success with AI subscriptions.

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VirusNewbie 13 hours ago

I do all the time now, buying stuff for my wife! Sweaters, lingerie, etc. because it's usually from brands she's been browsing and they target me.

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seattle_spring 8 hours ago

Many people haven't, but thanks to the wide world of cross-site tracking, frequent shopping cards etc, your purchases can still be attributed to ads you've seen (and even billboards!)

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Bender 21 hours ago

I really wonder who clicks ads

Not I. No idea.

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Alexmax84 19 hours ago

I don't think anybody does anymore as sick of seeing ads every where.

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throw310822 2 days ago

Me neither. I'm also surprised at how basic they are: they either show me the last product category that I've searched for (for weeks even after I completed the purchase) or random stuff.

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paulcole 18 hours ago

I think everything I'm wearing right now came from the result of me clicking an ad.

I like clicking ads! I work and I have money to spend on things I like.

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d--b 24 hours ago

yes it's a bit of a mystery to me as well, especially knowing that most of them are scams.

There are 2 things I don't understand.

1. Most online ads are illegal in EU, cause it's illegal to lie/mislead in an ad in the EU. The Tai Chi ads, the water pressure thing or the breezamax scams are all I see on Youtube, yet, they're obviously fake, and still running strong. How is it that they're not taken down?

2. The tai chi ad campaign must be costing millions of dollars. Everyone I know is seeing these fifteen times a day. Is anyone actually paying for that crap? Shouldn't Youtube increase the price of ads, so that they make more money and actually push scammers off the platform?

It doesn't make any sense

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haute_cuisine 23 hours ago

Will expensive ads instead push out the honest products with fair prices? Only casinos/betting/high margin will be able to afford expensive ads.