Do People Even Click Ads Anymore??

I don't want to discourage you, but I have a site that used to make close to $2000/month back around 2004 that now makes $200/month. It is a busy forum with several thousand unique visitors per day. We've increasingly opted to run our own advertising program. My advice to you is to make sure you have plans to get real people to your site, and don't just depend on google search bringing people to click on google adsense. That is increasingly a plan that will provide very little.

Wow, that's a substantial difference! So it's evident people have definitely "adapted" to ads online and learned to channel them out over time.

I'm curious as to what may be more effective today - either switching the niche's main form of monetizing from AdSense to other affiliate sources (Clickbank, Amazon, ect..)

Or finding niches targeted at an audience who hasn't necessarily developed ad blindness (Perhaps the elderly, or younger kids).

Again, I'm relatively new to the IM game, so this is just some brainstorming. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on the matter.

Thanks for the insight Dan.

In other words, while not a reason to dismiss Google Ads altogether, you must find other baskets to put your eggs in.

Back to the drawing board.

I wont market anything to kids again, they don't have credit cards! I was on page 1 for remote control cars, trucks, boats air plains, helicopters. not only that, I dominated with 3 sites showing up for these terms. Kids don't have money.

Yes people click on ads. They click on banner ads, search engine ads and every kind of ad imaginable.

As a matter of fact, people who click on ads have a different intent then people randomly trolling through search engine results or casually reading your site. They click on ads because they're interested in BUYING something.

In other words, they know there's a sales pitch they're in for once they click the ad and they do it anyway.

PPC traffic if properly optimized is the best kind out there.

The reson most people click on ads is because they are looking to the answer for something and click on it. The reason most of you dont click on them are because you are internet makreters and know what they are.

Question: Do you see a lot of ads on the Internet?

Answer: See question above

(People do not spend money on ads unless they are making money from them. The fact there is advertising all over the Internet should be proof enough that it still works.)

yes thy definitely do or a lot of people wouldnt be making money!

*looks at my adsense* - Yep they do.

Dont give up on MFA-based sites (Made for AdSense). I have 2 simple blogs that get about 8 clicks daily---each. I dont get a whole lot of money because they dont pay much (they're based on keywords marked with low competition). But nevertheless, people actively click the ads shown.

Try to focus on products, or "buying" keywords. For example, if you talk about cheap flights on your blog, it may contain tips to save money on flights and some sample places to travel to. Since you're not offering the plane tickets yourself, however, people will likely end up clicking related ads to get what they ultimately came for.

Personally I don't click on ads very often and most of the time I blatantly ignore them.

However, I think that I and indeed most people on this forum are in the minority of internet users. We know ads, we know how they work, we make them. There is another minority of internet users who also ignore ads, I'm gonna call them the "nerds" even though it's probably an unfair term. And yes, I am a nerd!

Things like adblocker pro and similar are used more widely now than before, that's for certain. But for MOST internet users ... they will click on an ad without thinking about it.

I'll use my mother as an example. She will click on anything that looks interesting and indeed must be steered away from dangerous links. She's an active internet user though, and researches plenty online. She doesn't know what's and add and what isn't. She just clicks happily away.

And I think that's the case overall. MOST internet users don't analyse (or even realise a lot of the time) ads as long as they're not too obvious. They just click on something interesting or eye catching. Which is exactly what good ads should do, draw the average internet user to a product or service that is relevant or useful to them.

Just my opinion. Sorry that it's a bit long-winded. But I'm tired.

Marketers without a lot of money do not click ads, because they know that the link will lead to a request to spend money.

Otherwise, people who are not marketers see links they do or do not want to follow.

And people who have money to spend are not afraid to look at any page that might ask them to spend money.

So the answer to your question is, "Yes, people do still click on ads. And thank goodness, because commerce would stop if people did not."

There is one concern I have: adblock and similar browser plugins which are designed to block ads. Adblock shows 14 million users: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir.../adblock-plus/

That's not astronomical compared to global usage figures but it does show people are easily tempted into using plugins like this.

What if, for whatever reason, a plugin like this is enabled by default in future versions of firefox, or other browsers which don't have interest in ads (unlike Google)? Or, somebody could create an 'add-free' browser "for annoyance free web surfing" as Adblock Plus put it.

This might be a farfetched theory but the implications of adblock plugins mean less profits for most of us, no matter which way you look at it.

I still click them if it is something that interests me.

Thank you all for the great posts - you've all been very insightful, and have given me reason enough to stay focused on my niche sites.


Thanks again, - Andrew.

Yes, people do, as long as they're not 'flashy' big banner ads that clearly set the wrong image in visitors' mind. I still click on Google ads; probably averaging once a day. Obviously though, over time people adapt to them more and more and have less possibility that they will click on your ads.

I've made about $50 from AdSense in the last year or so. But I have noticed that in the last few months I've jumped from about $1 or so a month to about $5 a month in AdSense earning. I know that's not much, but if it's any indication of things and it keeps growing from there I'll be very happy.