Do you visit Google Ads?

[kadidle]

I was looking at a site linked to by a Google Ad from The Gauge, and I'm curious how many people click on these? I personally follow at least one ad that interests me every day. Partially because I am always finding new stuff this way, and partially because I know it helps the site out (Some of my sites have Google Adwords as well).

Actually, that was one of the biggest factors for me to use FireFox, I love being able to center click the link and open it in a new tab.

So how about the rest of you, do you visit these ads?

 

[N Gauger]

This should be neat

If anyone wants to vote, pleas do. It'll help Peter, in the long run, to at least gauge interest in the ads.

Note, the question does NOT reflect your like or dislike of the ads, only if you actually click on any of them

~~ Thanks kadidle!!!

~~ Mikey

 

[Marxed]

i have yet to click them, but i do appricate the fact that we have google ads over those annoying flashing "your a winner" type banners, soo thanks for that one guys :thumb:

 

[Chessie6459]

This is a good idea Kadidle. Like Mikey said it will help Peter out.

 

[N Gauger]

i have yet to click them, but i do appricate the fact that we have google ads over those annoying flashing "your a winner" type banners, soo thanks for that one guys :thumb:

Yeah - When Peter first suggested the ads, that was one of the first things we all said "Please No!!!!" to....

I have Mozilla now anyway - it blocks all pop-ups, but it still isn't a good idea here...

 

[ezdays]

Ads, what ads? I have Mozilla (Firefox) too, but I've disabled the ad blocker since it was also blocking a lot of things I wanted to see. Now that they're enabled, I still tend to not see them. I probably would click on them more if I needed anything, but it's going to take me a long time to use all the stuff I've not even taken out of their boxes yet or haven't even run on my tracks.

 

[Will_annand]

I never click on them now.
When they first appeared, I did click a couple, but when I found it was false advertising, I just decided to forget it.

Oh, the one I thought was false advertising...

It said "Your source for N Scale on the internet", I clicked it and only found Atlas Snap track, one set of Con-Cor passenger cars and one Atlas Deisel locomotive. ALL the remaining categories were empty. Some source,

The other one offered a guide to model railroading, but the site looked so amateurish that I passed on the book.

So now I don't bother.

 

[Roger Hensley]

Never, never never. What do you get, .01 per click? Is it worth it?

 

[ScottyB]

I'm with ezdays, but I still block everything, including all Google ads. I just think they are terribly ugly, especially since it seems most sites started using them on EVERY page.

Roger, Google won't state how much they pay per click, although it is a pretty decent amount. I used to do a lot of affiliate marketing and after Google Ads came out, a lot of my counterparts discovered they make more with Google than with any other affiliate program. I can't bring myself to do it on my sites.

Scott

 

[Peter T Davis]

What do you get, .01 per click? Is it worth it?

Sadly, that's not too far from the truth.

 

[eightyeightfan1]

Excuse me for being "computer challenged", but whats a Google Ad?
Does it have something to do with the search engine?...or...Did I just answer my own question?

 

[ezdays]

Excuse me for being "computer challenged", but whats a Google Ad?
Does it have something to do with the search engine?...or...Did I just answer my own question?

Go to the main page and look to the left at the string of ads. Unless you have some sort of ad blocker software, these ads are the ones being referred to as "Google ads", mainly because that's their heading.

 

[Zman]

Ads need eye appeal, take it from someone who's been in retail sales for many years.

The google ads are boring - no colors, no highlights, no dancing chickens.

No one is going to click on them until you make them sufficiently interesting enough to distract people from the forum.

 

[Marxed]

Ads need eye appeal, take it from someone who's been in retail sales for many years.

The google ads are boring - no colors, no highlights, no dancing chickens.

No one is going to click on them until you make them sufficiently interesting enough to distract people from the forum.

actually the flashy dancing ads are soo 1990's, they just dont work anymore. text ad's are actually the wave of the future and out-do flashy ads.

Text-only ads continue to work better than traditional graphics-based ads for some time to come. Web users have long exhibited strong banner blindness and avoid anything that looks like an advertisement. Text-only ads don't resemble the designs that people have trained themselves to screen out, and the resulting visibility surely contributes to the success of text-only ads.

Also, text-only ads benefit from a temporary novelty effect, as does any new advertising format that people have not yet learned to ignore.

Over the long term, however, the novelty effect will obviously fade. Users might also develop box blindness, ignoring little text boxes just as they've long ignored banner-shaped areas of the screen. Thus, text-only ads are not guaranteed a bright future outside their native search engine habitat.


Text-only ads might have one durable advantage: because they're a low-end media format, users might take them more seriously. Being forced to express a message in a few words concentrates the advertiser's mind, and probably leads to more communicative ads that are better focused on explaining how users will benefit from the product or service.

Although there is no inherent reason that you can't use text for mindless chatter -- like "where do you want to go today?" -- there is no way users will click on such ads. Ignoring users' immediate needs is certain death on the Web.

Companies that run rich-media ads that ignore user needs can delude themselves into thinking that they're "promoting the brand"; in reality, they're simply being ignored because they don't connect with people's needs. The text-only format more clearly exposes content-free messages as useless, however, and thus might save advertisers from the bad instincts they honed on old media.

 

[Ray Marinaccio]

If clicking on these adds earns this site money. Why can't someone come up with a program that clicks on these adds all day.

 

[Marxed]

If clicking on these adds earns this site money. Why can't someone come up with a program that clicks on these adds all day.

they would catch on really fast... they can tell who clicks what and how many times its clicked... i'm sure they track IP addresses for that reason.. to keep one person from clicking over and over again and earning alot of money

 

[Ray Marinaccio]

they would catch on really fast... they can tell who clicks what and how many times its clicked... i'm sure they track IP addresses for that reason.. to keep one person from clicking over and over again and earning alot of money

That makes sense. I am sure someone has tried it.

 

[theBear]

If clicking on these adds earns this site money. Why can't someone come up with a program that clicks on these adds all day.

That is called click fraud.

Google deals with it in two ways.

1: If they can determine that it might be done by someone connected with the site the ad is running on they will simply block the account and not pay.

2: If they determine it is click fraud they will back out the clicks and maybe go after the folks at the IP address.

If you report to the owner of this forum who was placing the misleading ads it is possible to block those advertisments.

Google currently pays a site owner about 40% of what they get paid by the advertiser.

I know this because both Adsense (what the forum is using) and Adwords (what the advertiser is using) are both used by the sites I do work for.

You can make decent money being part of the Adsense network. However you have to have decent content to draw decent ads for, and the ads also have to make you want to click them. They have both text and image ads, the ad system is javascript based.

 

[Dragon]

to be honest, I rarely even consciously notice them. With the over-assault of advertising nowadays, my brain just filters out what I'm not interested in. Maybe if they had ads for Walthers or Precision Scale I might notice them, but since it is not related to any hobby/interest of mine, they re ignored.

 

[GeorgeHO]

I have used the google ads on some occasions in the past, and when I have a specific need in the future I might use them again, but for right now I ignore them. Some of my bookmarks came from the ads.