Why I want Google to think I’m liberal, and why I always click on democrat political ads (for educational purposes only)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting a lot of ads for the democrat voting petition lately, and I always click on the ads, as well as every liberal ad I get (like planned parenthood and democrat campaign ads). Why do I do this? Because it is wasting paid ad impressions on someone who would never support their cause while at the same time helping to support the creator I’m viewing or service I’m using.

Let me break down how this works. Google adwords users (what advertisers use to run google ads) only pay when people click on their ads, ignored ads don’t cost any money even though someone may still see the ad (or maybe views cost like 1% of what interaction costs, it’s been a while since I used adwords), and most internet users don’t click on ads. So if someone buys 1,000 interactions for their ad, and ads have a 2% click rate, that ad is getting 50,000 views.

Now adsense users (what content creators and websites run to get paid by ads) only get paid when people click on the ads that they run, so it doesn’t really matter if a video gets 1,000 views or 50,000 views, if there were only 500 clicks on ads the user gets paid the same (there’s some fine details about click rate, retention, and other factors that go into how much the ad costs, but generally speaking it’s kind of the same).

So here’s where the political ads come in. We all know google is constantly tracking us, our online activity is constantly monitored and that is built into an online ad profile for what we are most likely to interact with. For this reason, I will go to planned parenthood’s website and various democrat campaign websites somewhat regularly, just to build that ad profile that I want this kind of stuff. If I go to a republican campaign website, I will spend 10x as much time on a democrat campaign website. Then the ad profile algorithm is rewarded when a user clicks on an ad, so when I click on a democrat campaign ad, that strongly reinforces the ad profile and “this is the content I want,” way more than just visiting websites. When I click on the democrat ad, I get a lot more democrat ads which I then click on, and then it just snowballs.

Now when it’s election time, or planned parenthood donation drive time, I waste my political opponent adword impressions on me, someone who will never support their cause. If they bought the hypothetical 1,000 interactions, they would still have 1,000 interactions if I just ignored the ad, but now only have 999 interactions if I click on the ad, that’s an interaction that could have been used to sway someone to that position, but instead went to someone that would never be swayed to that position. It’s for the same reason but opposite direction I don’t click on republican ads (I already know I’m going to support you, so save that impression for someone that could be swayed). Then this has the added benefit of supporting the creators and services I use, because unless I click on an ad my view is essentially worthless. It’s especially fun when I get one of these ads on a Bill Whittle or other conservative creator’s videos, because then I know the ad money is going to someone that is diametrically opposed to them, and I always comment “I got [this ad] and clicked on it, enjoy the blood money.”

Now I can’t encourage anyone to do this, because that would be a google TOS violation, but I just wanted to let my fellow like-minded members know why I like completely irrelevant political ads. *wink*