>Probably the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser. You're demonstrating that you have disposable income that you're willing to part with to overcome an inconvenience.
Hm. Conventional wisdom is that at least for websites making money off of adsense, you don't want to advertise to Engineers, because like most sophisticated customers they don't click on ads.
My take is that the class of consumers willing to pay money to block ads is likely to be more sophisticated than average, and thus less likely to click on ads.
>Hm. Conventional wisdom is that at least for websites making money off of adsense, you don't want to advertise to Engineers, because like most sophisticated customers they don't click on ads.
Engineers will click on ads for products that are interesting for them. The fact that they won't click on most ads are an issue with the quality of that ad or product.
Digital Ocean advertise in my Twitter feed, but I am already a customer of theirs, otherwise I would be very tempted to click.
Most ads and most products suck so badly, but that isn't an issue with the advertising model.
>Digital Ocean advertise in my Twitter feed, but I am already a customer of theirs, otherwise I would be very tempted to click.
Huh. See, I have been using digital ocean as an example of how a good product can overcome terrible advertising, and how what really matters in the VPS market is how much ram/disk you are handing out per dollar you charge.
But then, I'm thinking of their animated ads (Which I see all the time, 'cause apparently google thinks I really want to watch ads produced by my competitors.)
I haven't seen their animated ads, because I adblock all sites by default, but their ad was a textbook case of a simple ad with a straightforward pitch: "VPS, starting from $5 a month" (if I recall correctly).
>I haven't seen their animated ads, because I adblock all sites by default,
wait, i thought this conversation started when I said something like "Engineers don't click on ads" and then you said something like "But I click on ads"
Now it comes out that you use adblock, which does seem to support my thesis in the general case.
>Engineers will click on ads for products that are interesting for them.
I think of clicking on ads, well, a lot like how I think of talking with salesmen. I'm not immune to manipulation by skilled salespeople, so I go out of my way to be conscious of the source of any particular bit of information I receive when I'm buying something. I know that I'm going to make worse decisions with a skilled salesman in the room.
First I would notice that their offer appeals to me. Then I would click the ad to see more details and then finally I might do independent research into their claims and see if there are better offers.
That is pretty much how I would go about getting anything substantial purchased anyway.
Focusing on ad clicks is a classic case of measuring what is easy rather than what is important. Even if I don't click on an ad I may notice it and remember it and next time I'm in the market for whatever the ad was selling I'll think of that company and type their name into Google.
Many common misconceptions here, the main one being that online advertising is completely click-dependent. The biggest share of the ad dollars is actually coming from brand-building campaings where dollars are spent for impressions that aren't even optimized for KPIs related to clicks.
>The biggest share of the ad dollars is actually coming from brand-building campaings where dollars are spent for impressions that aren't even optimized for KPIs related to clicks.
Huh. That's interesting, because it certainly is my impression that most online advertising is click-based, but I have little experience of the high end.
I know that I spend all my ad dollars on (or what I spent my ad dollars on when I spent ad dollars) are attempts at brand building. The thing is, if you really want to build your brand, you don't want the ads to be about you... you want the content to be about you. And that's kind of a different problem, at least if you are targeting sophisticated customers who won't read publications where the content is obviously bought.
If you include adwords-search in online advertising, cliks will dominate. However, if you look only at display (banners, links, video) then clicks are not dominant at all.
Hm. Conventional wisdom is that at least for websites making money off of adsense, you don't want to advertise to Engineers, because like most sophisticated customers they don't click on ads.
My take is that the class of consumers willing to pay money to block ads is likely to be more sophisticated than average, and thus less likely to click on ads.