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People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

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Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#61
Note also that this could be due to the fact that clicks (and I suspect likes as well) that come from the internal company networks (which includes VPN) are not billed to the customer, and are not counted for anything involving revenue. Google/FB employees spend much of their time at work or connected to work.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#62
post #58
post #29

I want contextual ads, like the original AdSense "Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising in which the content of an ad is in direct correlation to the content of the web page the user is viewing. For example, if you are visiting a website concerning travelling in Europe and see that an ad pops up offering a special price on a flight to Italy, that’s contextual advertising. " https://en.wikipedia.org…

For this reason, I think the ultimate ad network would be a combination of Google's data, Facebook's data, and data from a payment processor (PayPal or Stripe). Google knows what you're after, right now. Facebook knows what you're into, in general. PayPal/Stripe know your propensity to spend money online. I would argue that the perfectly targeted ad will want to know about all of these. Google's data & mechanism (sea…

> For some people, this is the nightmare scenario.

Because the power balance is completely in favour of the advertiser. They employ psychologists[1] to improve the effectiveness of their adverts — that is, to make people buy things they didn't actually want to buy.

[1] http://www.psychologyschoolguide.net/psychology-careers/adve...

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#63

"Silicon Valley people don’t click on ads... Similarly, they appear not to be commenting or liking posts as frequently" The most successful drug dealers don't use their own stuff, I hear. Edit: I think I sounded a little snarky here. To be clear, I'm a huge fan of silicon valley. But I thought the analogy was humorous and thought provoking so I thought I'd share.

On that note, does anyone know anything about the impact of internet use in drug addiction (and crime)? I have a very speculative hypothesis that internet (social networks, porn, etc) might work as a super-crack, competing with (and crowding out) other addictions because it's cheap, abundant, and instant.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#64
post #24

Ad clicks are studied pretty extensively. A good search term is "compulsive clickers." The cariacature-with-a-bit-of-truth version is less-educated older white woman in Iowa. The heavy clicking user population, roughly 4% of users, is generally believed to contribute more than a majority of total clicks. This is as well-studied as you'd expect of clearly quantifiable data worth billions of dollars, and remains social…

This reminds me of the recent South Park episode on ads, for some reason.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#65

"Silicon Valley people don’t click on ads... Similarly, they appear not to be commenting or liking posts as frequently" The most successful drug dealers don't use their own stuff, I hear. Edit: I think I sounded a little snarky here. To be clear, I'm a huge fan of silicon valley. But I thought the analogy was humorous and thought provoking so I thought I'd share.

On that note, does anyone know anything about the impact of internet use in drug addiction (and crime)? I have a very speculative hypothesis that internet (social networks, porn, etc) might work as a super-crack, competing with (and crowding out) other addictions because it's cheap, abundant, and instant.

You're not the first to suggest that[1][2]. It's one of those things that is pretty hard to come up with proof either way though.

[1] http://thedailyjournalist.com/theinvestigative/are-the-inter...

[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.h... (although I'm pretty sure this extract misinterpretates some parts!)

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#67
post #49
post #18

I think this has a large effect on opinions in an often revisited internet topic "moving away from ads". Whenever a service starts to offer a paid alternative, or people get on the topic of tracking, or micropayments comes up, it's always struck me that commenters seem used to effectively free content and seem to just ignore that there are people subsidizing their internet usage by clicking on ads comparatively all t…

> Quality content, services, and products are expensive to make. An internet where we pay for it instead of it being supported by user targeted ads isn't going to be covered by paying 10 cents per article you really liked. Searching tells me that CPM is typically between $1 and $10. That implies ad income per site view of $0.001-$0.01, right? The fact that clicks are worth $1, or even $100, is irrelevant. What matter…

The barrier for ignoring ads is lower than bypassing a paywall. People will just be choosier about where they go and the site owner won't necessarily make as much.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#68
post #18

I think this has a large effect on opinions in an often revisited internet topic "moving away from ads". Whenever a service starts to offer a paid alternative, or people get on the topic of tracking, or micropayments comes up, it's always struck me that commenters seem used to effectively free content and seem to just ignore that there are people subsidizing their internet usage by clicking on ads comparatively all t…

I agree, quality content is expensive to make. But at the same time, we have access to an incredibly large amount of content (good or bad), and mostly for free. Wishing it away won't make it happen, and maybe it is a good thing.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#69

"Silicon Valley people don’t click on ads... Similarly, they appear not to be commenting or liking posts as frequently" The most successful drug dealers don't use their own stuff, I hear. Edit: I think I sounded a little snarky here. To be clear, I'm a huge fan of silicon valley. But I thought the analogy was humorous and thought provoking so I thought I'd share.

Pretty good. Likely more appealing than the one I had: People in SV are less stupid.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#70
Clicks are a bit of a weird metric in my opinion. It encourages optimisation for single instances of ad views, whereas what makes ads effective is the cumulative effect of multiple viewings. This may not even lead to a click, but to someone feeling more inclined to go a certain way when making decisions.
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