1. I think the news.ycombinator.com crowd is a really poor proxy for the 150M Americans on line.
2. People's ad blindness depends, at least in part, on the situation. Some sites hide context sensitive ads for registered/regular users, because they know that such users aren't likely to click on them. The users who are most likely to click on them are people who are actively searching for information, such as people who arrived by clicking on a search result. If they don't find the information they are looking for, they are going to move on. If the ad displayed is relevant, it presents an attractive place to move on to.
For my part, I usually completely ignore all the paid placements on the Google search results, but when I'm shopping for something, I'll click on the ads if people seem to have what I'm looking for.
well, although it seems a lot of people here don't like ads the truth is that they come in handy at times. For example if I'm looking to buy business cards online I will likely go with one of the advertised choices and rarely bother to even look through the search results. I might check out several of the posted options if they look attractive and then decide which one to buy but I would say that the advertising component works out well. I can say the same about buying phone cards, searching for web or email hosting or other services that I don't use often. If I need to buy books I know to go to Amazon, but for a lot of other things I'll check out Google and click on ads. I have a feeling a lot of the other people that use the internet for services do the same thing.
If the adwords are relevant, why would users ignore them? Adwords are fundamentally different from banners in that they are customized to the query. If they were so ineffective, where would all of google's money be coming from?
I probably click on 1 ad a month completely by mistake, and maybe another one just from curiosity, and then from searching something I have a good idea of where it is but I'm lazy to look it up, and when I see the link on top (sponsored) I click it just for kicks...
I'm probably not the average user, but if you multiply that by a few million people, it can def. add up
When was the last time you bought something after clicking on a google ad? Or at least, when did you bookmark a website you got to through AdSense? Two simple metrics that I bet most people have never done through googads
I personally think AdSense sucks. I was really fed up with those clingy, annoying ads and started using FireFox extensions. I even personally suggest my friends to do so. I'd prefer DoubleClik's banners instead. At least they have some aesthetics and creativity ( very few of them though.)Google has successfully fooled the advertisers. Don't you think so?
Its not just the stupid-looking ads but my privacy is also in their hands every time any Google Ad shows up on any website. I am assuming that you guys know how Google Ads work!
I don't think they will be able to make much money out of it in coming years. And,users will definitely rise up against Google to regain their privacy.
google is already trying new things to make sure you just dont click by accident, such as making you do something to pay you (ie, sign up for a newsletter, actually BUY a product), but if they were to do that fully, they'd loose a lot of revenue as I feel that most people that click on ads do so by accident or out of curiosity, not necessarily with the intent of actually purchasing a product or a service
Given how users got banners-blind after some years of conditioning, how long would it take for them to become Adwords-blind, especially with 99.999999999999999999999% of websites forcing these ads on them via Adsense?
2. People's ad blindness depends, at least in part, on the situation. Some sites hide context sensitive ads for registered/regular users, because they know that such users aren't likely to click on them. The users who are most likely to click on them are people who are actively searching for information, such as people who arrived by clicking on a search result. If they don't find the information they are looking for, they are going to move on. If the ad displayed is relevant, it presents an attractive place to move on to.
For my part, I usually completely ignore all the paid placements on the Google search results, but when I'm shopping for something, I'll click on the ads if people seem to have what I'm looking for.