Do you click on AdSense?

[dcldnl]

I'm using AdSense on my blogs to earn few money but, sincerely, I don't click on other Ads while I'm reading blogs or websites.
What about you? Do you click on other ads?

[zpivat]

Sometimes, only when I think the ads might lead to something useful. Other than that, no, as a courtesy to the Adwords advertisers..........

[Dating Specialist]

Yes only if the ads trigger my interest to find out more.

And I'm hoping my ads get click too so I can earn some money to cover my hosting cost for my blog!

[TechnoGuyRob]

Never. I have AdBlock and Filterset.G to thank for that.

[SamBeaven]

I don't honestly think that technically-savvy people often click on adsense ads, or any ads for that matter - we tend to be more biased against straight advertising, maybe because of nasty flash ads or something. But I think the majority of people will more likely than not click them if they're relevant.

Me? I click them if they seem particularly interesting, but generally not so much. But we're not much of a wide sample.

[Henry]

Almost never, unless

a) The offer looks interesting and more importantly,
b) The URL looks reputable or from a large company (Think Washington Mutual, ING Direct, or Amazon).

Unfortunately, a lot of the advertisers on the adsense blocks look shady.

[Brutha]

I click on adsense links that I find interesting.

[TheColonel]

Yes, but I don't do it as a favor to the publisher. I do it because the sales pitch is intriguing.

I have never clicked on a pop-up, though. I hate those things with a passion. Pop-unders, too. Anything that's screaming for my attention gets ignored...

[Chris D]

Sometimes.

If I find the ad interesting and it's on an interesting blog I'll click on the ad.

That way the blogger and the advertiser win. I don't usually buy a lot of stuff off the 'net though.

BTW... this post caught me as I was making my way to the Introductions area... (my first post on this forum)

Regards,
Chris

[thadroe]

I used to click on them all the time before I had any idea what they really were.

Now, being an advertiser myself, I never click on them unless it really looks like something I might be interested in.

It's funny, I watch my wife surf the web and she clicks on them all the time without even thinking about it....especially myspace layout stuff. It's funny to see how those work. They put up a site with crappy myspace layouts that clearly no one will like. Then have ads all over the place for other myspace layout sites...becomes an endless adsense circle for anyone actually looking for quality layouts.

Thad

[pi11]

This may sound like a silly question, but after how many page views have you seen actual CPM money being generated?

My site isn't popular enough for me to see anything from CPM yet. On CTR, I have $9.30 total after about 4months! Woo!

[TheColonel]

Originally Posted by pi11

This may sound like a silly question, but after how many page views have you seen actual CPM money being generated?

My site isn't popular enough for me to see anything from CPM yet. On CTR, I have $9.30 total after about 4months! Woo!

This may sound ridiculous, but my ClickThroughRate went from around 1% for several months to 20% for a few months, and now it's been sitting at just over 30% for about 6 weeks.

And I haven't tweaked a thing. My traffic hasn't changed, and I don't click my own ads. I'm stumped.

I did submit my sites to a couple hundred directories about 2 months ago, and I do some revenue sharing over at digitalpoint forums. But those guys typically don't click squat.

Who knows? I'm not complaining, but it is unusual to maintain that kind of CTR.

[Adam]

My all-time CTR? 0.7%...

To tell you the truth, that's also right about where my personal ad-clicking percentage is for other people's site...

Perhaps I could change my scarcity by being more conscious of other people's ads, and actually clicking them when they seem interesting... Maybe that would manifest people to click on mine.

[Raphael]

Those of you who still see (adsense)ads should really get https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865/ (and Firefox / Opera) if you don't use it yet.
There are very poweful predefined filterrules which block 95% of all ads - even Flashads.

Everytime I'm at a PC without adblock I'm shocked how much of it is out there and how people can happily arrange with it.

[Jan Krüger]

I prefer becoming aware of possibilities by other, more informative means, and I rarely buy things I happen to stumble across anyway. This is why I use ad filters. Oh, and ads are annoying, too.

[Adam]

I already have Adblock... I even use it on Portable Firefox (PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives | Your Digital Life, Anywhereâ„¢) so that I don't have to see ads when I go to anyone else's computer.

The thing is, though, I'm not offended by Adsense ads, so there's no reason for me to turn them off... I've got hundreds of other ads that I'll quickly turn off, though... especially if I get caught by a pop-up.

I just see it as a courtesy to the content developers who are nice enough to ignore the spam-servers.

[zpivat]

Originally Posted by TheColonel

I don't click my own ads.

Good that you don't! Otherwise G would likely terminate your Adsense account.........

[TheColonel]

Early on, I read horror stories on webmaster boards. People who swore up and down that they weren't clicking their own ads who got terminated. People who click their own ad once, and got flushed.

So I decided up front that besides being dishonest, it's just not worth it. Stealing from advertisers has karmic consequences!

[zpivat]

Originally Posted by TheColonel

Early on, I read horror stories on webmaster boards. People who swore up and down that they weren't clicking their own ads who got terminated. People who click their own ad once, and got flushed.

Yes, even not clicking our own ads doesn't guarantee that our account won't get terminated. Many people have lost their account mysteriously, and Google is notorious for their unwillingness to reveal the reason as to why it happens.
One of the most common reasons is that a competitor could deliberately click on our ads multiple times in order to harm us.
Another reason is that a ghost could do it.........(i.e: happens mysteriously)

That's why I never deliberately reveal my sites to anyone........(still, not a foolproof method.)

[smoothify]

I too run AdBlock (trying out AdBlock Plus now) and so don't see many ads at all.

I remember reading a forum thread on another site where a few posters thought it was unethical to use adblockers on sites.

Their reasoning was that you are reading the site's for free and this is the only way the owner receives an income from it.

I realise some adverts can be subtle and well targeted, for instance i sometimes click ads on a google search, but others I find annoying and an intrusion on my screen.

What do you all think?

Is it unethical to block ads?

or unethical to display lots of ads?

Where is the balance in all this, and as i posted in another thread here are there alternatives to advertising for sites?

[Patricia]

I will click on an ad if it's relevant to me. That's the whole point of ads. I have some background in marketing and advertising, so I'll try to give a simplistic insider perspective here:

When you see an ad on a website/blog, that particular ad you're seeing might or might not be relevant to you and this applies to everyone visiting the website. What is of no relevance to you might be of relevance to another person. And the reason why most people click on ads just every once in a while is because there's a lot being advertised, not everything will be relevant to everyone. While I will click on 1% of the ads I see (just for the sake of example, I'm not trying to be statistically accurate), other people will also click on 1% - the 1% that is relevant to them as well. And this is expected, advertisers know that only a certain percentage of the audience will click on their ads - and that's also what makes well targeted advertising so important: the better ways you can find to appropriately and optimally target your ads and, consequently, increase the click through rate, the better results you'll get as an advertiser. And that's pretty much what Google AdSense tries to do (and does well) in terms of matching ads with content keywords.

Of course there are many other factors involved in this, but they are not the object of this thread.

But anyway, going back to what I was saying before, when you put all of those 1% together (again, this is not accurate statistics, I'm using 1% for the sake of the example), it builds up. It builds up proportionally to your website's traffic. We tend to think that because we don't click on ads very often and, because of that, we assume most people don't either (and it's a correct assumption) - and then we see those $9.00 in our AdSense account after a month or two - that the problem is with advertising or the advertising model itself - and that's the incorrect assumption. Here's why: as much as ads are seen as annoying, distractive, etc by most people, most of them will click on ads that seem relevant to them. If this wasn't true, the AdSense program (or online advertising in general for that matter) wouldn't be around. If, say, you are interested in a certain subject or planning on buying a new product and happen to stumble apon an ad that has something to do with the subject you're interested in or the product you're buying, chances are that this ad is going to catch your attention. And if the ad itself does a good job in transmitting credibility (among other things), it's very likely that you will click on it. We know that statistically this process will complete itself in certain percentages - and these percentages vary according to a number of different factors. But the results we get as bloggers/website owners are nothing but a reflection of this process/logic. Steve makes a very decent income from his blog because it's a very high traffic website, but the logic applies to everyone/every website, including Steve's. I don't think most of his visitors click on ads on his blog any differently or with more frequency than they do on other websites (unless people do that as a deliberate way of giving something back, which probably makes this a poor example, but I think you get the idea...). What I mean is that any website that generates a good income from ads does that as a result of high traffic (and of course building consistent traffic that will generate this income is usually a result of providing relevant content). But the percentages and the logic tend to be consistent.

I don't know if dcldnl was questioning this kind of thing by asking his (her?) original question, it seemed to me that was the case, but I hope I didn't go too much offtopic here.

[Michelle]

I don't believe that there is anything mysterious about how G handles their Adsense clients. I have accidentally clicked on my own ads while working on my site. What happened? Nothing. The click just registered as 0$.

[dcldnl]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I don't know if dcldnl was questioning this kind of thing by asking his (her?) original question, it seemed to me that was the case, but I hope I didn't go too much offtopic here.

I'm a male! You are not offtopic, however, in my opinion, visitors are clicking less on ads then 2 years ago.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by dcldnl

I'm a male! You are not offtopic, however, in my opinion, visitors are clicking less on ads then 2 years ago.

Thanks for clarifying you're a male, I couldn't tell from your username. As for people clicking less on ads today than 2 years ago, I don't know. I would love to see some statistics. If I had to guess, though, I'd say I have a feeling it's the opposite - based on nothing really, just an impression. Why do you think people are clicking less on ads now? (just curious)

[zpivat]

Originally Posted by Michelle

I don't believe that there is anything mysterious about how G handles their Adsense clients. I have accidentally clicked on my own ads while working on my site. What happened? Nothing. The click just registered as 0$.

I guess you were just lucky . A lot of people have got their account terminated due to accidentally clicking one of their own ads.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by zpivat

I guess you were just lucky . A lot of people have got their account terminated due to accidentally clicking one of their own ads.

I have clicked on my own ads in all of the websites I run - more than once. I guess I've been more than lucky then.

This is just a guess, but I think Google terminates accounts for other reasons and people who clicked their own ads and had their accounts terminated, well, this could be just a coincidence. From Google's perspective, people clicking on their own ads should only be a problem if they over do it, making it obvious that they are trying to boost the revenues themselves. Because if you think about it, what if I see an ad on my blog that is genuinely relevant to me? Why would it be wrong for me to click on it? I would do that if I was in another website seeing the same ad, I'm a potential customer just the same. I really don't know what their policies are and how they make this judgement call, but I think in most cases when people had their accounts terminated after clicking their own ads, it might have been a coincidence.

[Travis_Farnes]

I dont think I have ever clicked on an ad, but I do find myself to be a person that is immune to advertising. I do know that many people do click on ads though, I just have no idea what kind of person they are.

[dcldnl]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I would love to see some statistics. If I had to guess, though, I'd say I have a feeling it's the opposite - based on nothing really, just an impression. Why do you think people are clicking less on ads now? (just curious)

I mean that in two years I've incremented a lot blog visitors but not in same way ads revenue.
It seems that when you have content people read your posts and don't clicks because they finds what are searching for, when yoo have few content you have less visitors but they don't finds what they are searching for and clicks on ads.

I'm sorry for my bad English!!!

[Rat-race]

Being an adsense publisher myself, I don't click on adsense because I've trained myself to be very careful not to accidentally click one of my own ads. It's a fear really. And I think it carries over to other sites.

It's just that psychological conditioning that says, "Danger. Do not click," when I see any Google ad.

[kthdsn]

I use adblock to block annoying ads, but I don't find adsense ones annoying so I don't block them. I occassionally click interesting adsense ads but I have rarely clicked any other type of advert, and especially not annoying in your face ones.