
People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads - coloneltcb
https://medium.com/@robleathern/people-in-silicon-valley-don-t-click-on-ads-9d2eed1c74af#.ebiblq892
======
thedevil
"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.

~~~
thedevil
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.

~~~
slang800
Non-substance addictions (including internet use) lack the physical dependence
created by drugs like cocaine. So, it would be hard to compare them to "super-
crack".

I could certainly see how, for example, repeatedly checking your phone could
mirror the behavioral aspect of smoking cigarettes. However, losing your phone
won't cause withdrawal symptoms like headache, nausea, or fatigue.

Also, I'd agree that social behavior being focused around online interaction
could potentially serve as a deterrent (or at least distraction) from drug use
/ crime. Based on Todd Kendall's paper [Pornography, Rape, and the
Internet]([http://idei.fr/sites/default/files/medias/doc/conf/sic/paper...](http://idei.fr/sites/default/files/medias/doc/conf/sic/papers_2007/kendall.pdf)),
porn has been responsible in some part for the decreasing rate of rape, but
not other crimes. I can't find much research on non-rape crime being affected
by internet use, but the St. Helena TV study by Tony Charlton did show that
aggressiveness in children was reduced by the introduction of TV. Obviously TV
is far less interactive than web-browsing, but it's the most similar study I
can find. :P

~~~
OvidNaso
"Physical dependence" with respect to addiction really is nothing. Substances
that create physical withdrawal symptoms can certainly be very very unpleasant
(even dangerous), but if they were at all the main factor in addiction, drug
abuse treatment would be a glorious, happy, incredibly successful industry.

Think about it: Even the worst "physically addictive" substances, let's say
heroin, will be completely clear from physically in 7-10 days. Two weeks tops.
Anybody can put up with that and, in fact, many addicts do it all the time. If
that was the differentiating factor, locking up an addict would work because
they would come to their "senses" after no longer physically dependent.
Obviously, that's not how it is. Real addiction is something much deeper and
cognitively still mysterious. Physical withdrawal (those first two weeks of
hell) is called, in the treatment community, the easy part.

I think when most people use the "physical dependence" reference like you did,
they are really trying to categorize and emphasize (internally or externally)
that among substances and behaviors that are addictive, certain ones more
often consume a persons entire being. This process is still a complete mystery
and even if people can't or won't accept the amazing power and bizarre scope
of cognitive function...it is certainly not 'physical dependence' and I
therefore don't think there is any real need to continue with that minor
classification.

~~~
justinh
You're on the right track here, but opiates and alcohol also create a
lingering hell for the sufferer called PAWS. The longer a person abuses a
substance, the longer PAWS lasts. It is not uncommon for PAWS to last a year
or more.

To be successful, a person has to somehow manage & deal with PAWS, while also
facing life, and the deeper causes of their addiction. This is why I am an
advocate of recovery that includes bupenorphrine. It allows a person who has
the right motivations the space to recover.

It is an unjust tragedy the way this country/world treats people who suffer
from addiction.

------
Trundle
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 the time.

I think it would be wise for us to reflect on, and admit, that we (power
users) are currently getting a far better than average deal in providing for
the web services we use.

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.

~~~
mirimir
> 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 matters is ad income divided by site
views. If every viewer paid that price, enforced by a paywall, the owner would
earn as much as they had from ads.

~~~
qbrass
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.

~~~
mirimir
Paying $0.001-$.01 to bypass a paywall is arguably a very low barrier.
Allowance for children, poor people, etc would be needed, of course. Maybe
amusing image-mapping captchas would be workable. That could even be an income
stream, Mechanical Turk style.

~~~
bobmichael
That may be true for countries with online payments that actually work, but
keep in mind that for many third-world countries the jump from $0 to $0.001 is
hard, since people often do not have any way to perform an online payment.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, there needs to be an alternative.

------
patio11
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 socially contentious.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Not forgetting massive variations across nations. A company I used to work
with did some FB advertising, targeting nations they did good business with
via Adwords.

UK and USA were the worst for clicks, the rest of Europe a little higher, and
apparently in the Far East everyone clicks everything multiple times. Click
through rates were ridiculous.

Also interesting to note that despite being online and profitable for yearss
they never did find a way of making Facebook pay, in any nation.

We never did make sense of it!

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Perhaps they were automated click-throughs? Asian browsers are different
technology (every page needs automatic translation) - perhaps that tech was
doing the clicking?

~~~
anexprogrammer
That's possible I guess. They were gaining page likes and post likes pretty
well off the back of it, it just in no way compared with Adwords click through
rates.

It was killed off fairly quickly outside US and Europe as it was just burning
money.

------
manigandham
As much as I like HN, there seems to be a lot of confusion and misinformation
when it comes to ads.

People absolutely click on ads. All the time. Regardless of where they live.
Digital advertising is not some mystical industry but actually one of the most
scientific and data-driven with a massive amount of metrics generated
everyday.

I know the author of this article but it's a very slim look at the entire ad
ecosystem. There could be a thousand reasons why SV just has less ad clicks
with anything from less facebook use to more adblocking to less fit for the
audiences that many companies (that are advertising on facebook) are actually
after.

There are just as many other adtech companies and channels that show that SV
has very high interaction rates in clicking on whitepapers, signing up for
emails/newsletters, webinars, etc and other kinds of advertising outside of
facebook. Even google gets tons of search ad clicks in SV.

Facebook metrics are cool but it's important to remember that they are just a
little sliver of the larger ad market and that the larger context matters
anytime you analyze numbers like these.

~~~
kuschku
Yes, people click on ads. I click, on average, when not using an ad blocker,
accidentally around 200 ads a day on mobile.

I've now made it a sport to click, after I accidentally clicked, another few
dozen times. Kinda like Cookie Clicker.

Most clicks are accidental, or people doing fraud (for business or fun
reasons)

~~~
soared
Just so you know, Google very easily identifies your clicks as fake or
accidental so they are just thrown in the trash, nobody pays for them.

~~~
kuschku
Well, it’s not about money.

More: I accidentally click an ad, get angry, click it another 100 times, and
end up laughing about it.

Next week, when I have time, I’ll just root my device again and install AdAway
and XPosed with YouTube-AdBlock and YouTube-Background-Playback, and the issue
is resolved.

------
frik
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/wiki/AdSense#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense#History)
,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_advertising)

~~~
jfoster
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 (search) is probably the most useful; there's
a pretty good chance someone searching "where to buy X" is looking to buy X.
Combined with purchase data and personal preference data, the ability to
target would seem near-perfect. Not only would you know whether the user is
likely to buy X online, but you would also know what brand of X they might be
interested in (eg. if they liked "Dell"), where they would prefer to purchase
it from (eg. if they liked "Amazon"), and what bundling might appeal (eg. if
they liked "Logitech").

For some people, this is the nightmare scenario. All these big companies
putting together their data to algorithmically know what a consumer will buy
before the consumer knows what they will buy. I'm with you, though. I think it
would make advertising a lot less annoying, especially if it leads away from
"we need your attention!" video ads into hyper-targeted text & images.

The underlying assumption, though, is that advertising companies would be more
successful if targeting were better. Undoubtedly, a segment of their audience
would be in much higher demand than they are now. I suspect that a lot of
other segments would be in much lower demand, though. Would Emirates bid as
high on Google for "holidays in Europe" if they knew I had never spent online,
was elderly, and liked "Cruises" on Facebook?

~~~
Symbiote
> 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...](http://www.psychologyschoolguide.net/psychology-
careers/advertising-psychologist/)

~~~
soared
What? No. if you've done any online marketing employing a psychologists would
be stupid for 99% of businesses (Walmart being the 1%). You just analyze
mountains of data, learn best practices, and you'll be successful. That link
is trash, asking people to pay for training.

------
bcook
I would just say that computer savvy people do not click on ads, and Silicon
Valley has a concentration of said people.

------
teekert
Most people here seem to think that one clicks ads only by accident. If this
were true such clicks would never lead to a purchase or just associate a brand
with annoyance. I simply can't believe that. Sure, mostly, I see ads for stuff
I have just purchased, sometimes for months but there also have been useful
ones from time to time for me (mostly home automation/Raspberry Pi stuff),
also my brain seems wired not to ignore such ads.

Aren't geeks missing out by ignoring things targeted specifically to them
(us)? Are geeks just stubborn? If you say things like "we get a better deal
because stupid ad clickers pay for our internet experience", you are
completely missing the fact that such an ad clicker probably made a valuable
discovery through an ad, one that was even worth real money!

Do most HN-ers really believe all ads are fraudulent rip-offs designed to
trick us just into clicking on them? Sure some are, but people here seem to
think they all are.

~~~
narrowrail
Personally, I've never discovered anything specifically from an ad worth
purchasing, but I have found interesting things to purchase after an advert
inspired me to research a topic further.

Frankly, your comment reads as someone whose livelihood depends on
advertising.

~~~
teekert
I also hate ads in general, my livelihood certainly does not depend on them.
But there are sometimes ads that are useful. This must almost be the case as
ads (excluding punch the monkey-like ads) try to be useful.

Well, according to the numbers SF people do click ads from time to time. I
just can't imagine all ad clicks to be by accident and so by definition not
all ads are useless. So maybe HN-ers that never click ads and always ignore
them, do miss out.

~~~
Nursie
The only time I've clicked on ads in the last decade it was either accidental
clicks or when the ad has done its best to appear like content.

And no, I don't miss out, these people are trying to raid my wallet.

------
work-on-828
I really wish there was a service which would let me gripe about my problems
and it would email me 10 Ads a month of products trying to solve those
problems.

~~~
technotony
"Advertize what you want to buy, not what you sell" I forget the name but
there was a site trying that about eight years ago. Argentinian startup I
think. Might be worth trying again, you could build early adoption from
twitter maybe? Usual problem building a two sided market...

~~~
danblick
See "The intention economy" by Doc Searls.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_economy)

------
eva1984
Ironically, advertising business is mainly run by ad blocker users.

~~~
cpeterso
I heard that Google had to rename their ad management portal's CSS styles
because the site was broken for customers using ad blockers. :)

~~~
0xCMP
Well, still didn't work for me! :P (Privacy Badger, Disconnect, uBlock)

But I'm rather aggressively blocking anything/everything I can.

~~~
lstamour
If I recall, Facebook's ad manager might've asked me to disable my Adblock in
order to preview the ads. ;-)

------
DiversityinSV
I'm glad there is real data on this. I kept explaining to people that our
email and social habits in SV are a complete outlier vs. the rest of the
world.

~~~
bcook
So, before knowing there was reliable data, you constantly made unfounded
claims?

You made a good guess. Is that something to brag about? An opinion that you
feel the need to "constantly explain to people" borders on ranting... (an
embarassing past-time of my own)

~~~
DiversityinSV
Let's say it was strong empiric evidence (e.g. on event invites, I always saw
this, SV event invitation emails had the lowest open/clicks vs. other parts of
the country) Same email, different regions. Same result. I also get the
regular 'I hate emails, I don't click or read them' from a lot of coworkers,
despite being the main revenue channel. Yeah, it's fun to be right. I'm
bragging about it.

------
vezycash
Here are my reasons for not clicking on ads.

1\. Knowledge - I know an ad when I see one. And I know someone's getting paid
for that click. It's like knowing the trick behind a magic trick.

2\. I used to click ads - I clicked a ton of ads when I was still learning to
use the web. So now, my bullshit detector is well trained. It can tell spam
just from the URL, the wordings, the color...

3\. I see fewer ads now - Host blocking + ublock block origin.

------
alexandrerond
It reminds me of a story I was told about certain orange juice factory worker
never drinking orange juice.

------
anexprogrammer
Would it prove just as valid to say tech people don't click on ads?

------
rcheu
It actually looks more like people don't use Facebook nearly as much in
general? I don't think this data supports the suggestion that people in
Silicon Valley don't click on ads, they also have very low comment, like, and
share frequency as well. I think active time on site per user in Silicon
Valley is just lower than the national medians.

Also note that this seems to be rounded up to the nearest whole number, so we
can't figure out like:ad click ratio or something like that from the data.

------
melted
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.

------
Phemist
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.

~~~
soared
That is called awareness, the 1st step in the marketing (purchase) funnel.

------
gyc
Also interesting is the skew in visiting Facebook via desktop computers vs.
mobile in tech-centric areas vs. non-tech-centric areas. In addition, it was
interesting the see the difference in usage patterns between Denver and
Boulder, given that they are so close geographically.

~~~
soared
Boulder is comparable to SV, hippy start-up whatnot. Denver, not so much.

------
colmvp
Funny considering two of the biggest companies in SV in Facebook and Google
make incredible revenue from ads. I wonder if their employees use AdBlock or
click on ads.

~~~
chimeracoder
Anecodotal: a friend of mine worked at an ad tech company (not one of the big
brand names, though likely one that's served you ads at some point).

He said that everyone at their company used Adblock, to the point where it was
part of their developers' standard checklist when debugging issues that their
clients were having ("first, disable Adblock").

------
ForHackernews
Why would I ever click on an ad?

~~~
Tempest1981
How could anyone resist the allure of "Punch the Monkey"? Or Bonzi Buddy? :-)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy)
[http://www.mikeonads.com/2007/03/01/punch-the-
monkey/](http://www.mikeonads.com/2007/03/01/punch-the-monkey/)

~~~
0xCMP
Oh man, I remember the days. When I was younger my dad had to teach me that it
was an Ad. I wanted that free (X) so badly. I also loved punching the monkey.
So horrible, yet so much fun.

------
ksec
Does Ads need to be clicked for it to become good ads? What has happen to
display ads? I personally think some ads are like reminder, remind be of a
brand, remind me of something i know, reiterate, stating the obvious, all
these are marketing, and what ads should be.

------
mchahn
Could this be explained by technical people using more ad-blockers? Or is it
adjusted for ad-blockers?

~~~
ACow_Adonis
A curious note on my own behaviour. I've been on the internet since...roughly
1993/94?

Reflecting on how I act, even back in the day "before ad-blockers", even if I
saw an ad that seemed to link me to the place I wanted to go, I wouldn't click
on it.

Instead I would open up a new window/tab, actively go to a search engine,
search for the website/company/product I was interested in visiting (perhaps
the one mentioned in the link/ad) and enter via their website/front door.

I think this is a behaviour I've picked up from the historically learning that
banners/popups are just BAD NEWS...no exceptions. Like powerpoints,
attachments or strange emails, I just have ingrained in me these things are
not to be trusted and to not engage with them. Who knew where they're really
taking you with their redirects, what they're doing, if they're really sending
you where they say they are, or whether there's some hijack/virus/whatever.
Back in the day, they were just generally something delivered from the seedier
side of the internet: something to be avoided.

Nowdays, the seedier/annoying side of the internet has of course become the
mainstream, but that's why we have ad-blockers.

I'm curious to know though, if I'm the only person who, through their own
behaviour/history/preference, has been trained to go straight to the
company/source/product rather than through an ad even when its presented to
us...

~~~
frik
Me too. Back in those days, they got paid per view. So it didn't matter if one
click the ad. Nowadays most(?) ads are paid per click ("thanks" Google making
that a thing). Those ads that follow you around aren't that fun at all, rather
pretty creepy - the number one reason (I would say) that drive people to ad
blockers. Another reason are ad overloaded sites that crash your mobile
browser because of excessive memory usage.

------
rajneeshgopalan
I think people with a marketing/business background are also not sensitive for
clicking on ads.

~~~
MillerMichael
Couldn't agree more. I believe people who know how ads work, call them admen,
are less sensitive to ads than people who do not work in this field of work.

------
xkiwi
I recall @pg 's essay immediately:

"WHAT YOU'LL WISH YOU'D KNOWN"

[http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html)

here is what he wrote: If I were back in high school and someone asked about
my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were.

Silicon Valley, or people on HN generally, are doing this unconsciously. I was
shock that a lot of (non tech)people accept things as they are (as default).
They let phone APP like LinkedIn scan and grab the contact list; buy things
that are in the trend; over estimate price but underestimate value, etc.

ADs is good only if they introduce something new, CES-ish new, something that
are not in the trend but available up on request. Something that you are not
aware of, hope we get to that type of ad-era soon enough.

------
msoad
People in Silicon Valley don't click on ads and DO use shortcut keys! ;)

------
snarfy
I would assume tech users are more likely to install ad blockers.

------
wfunction
Is it because they run ad-blockers or disable tracking more?

------
hartator
10 people is not a big enough sample size, specially online.

~~~
Mithaldu
Look at the upper left corners of the images. They're looking at datasets of
100k+.

------
zepto
Silicon Valley tends to lead the rest of the US in tech behaviors.

~~~
kordless
This is the best comment in here. We are the early adopters and when we do or
don't do something, the rest aren't far behind with same.

~~~
teekert
Oh, "we" are so good, we are sooo leading. We even ignore things we don't
want!

Or do "we" also ignore ads for things we do want and the rest of the populous
does not, and are the rest of the people therefor smarter and better of? Are
ads always fraudulent rip-offs? Really?

~~~
kordless
Being an early adopter doesn't imply being smarter or better. The fact is,
early adopters may frequently be considered as advanced types of guinea pigs,
where they are willing to put up with shit other customers might not.[1]

I don't know the comment about the Bay Area being "sooo leading" is
necessarily accurate. We "lead movement" in a group of users based on the fact
we adopt (and work in) technology more than other groups. This isn't elitism
(which your comments lean toward implying) but more realism of the situation.
Silicon Valley _is_ where most of the high technology in the world originated.
It only makes sense the natives that live near that region are more likely to
be designated as early adopters. Of course, you can take my comment any way
you like.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter)

