Thank You For Not Clicking on the Ads at EPJ (Hee, Hee, Hee)

By Robert Wenzel

I have heard people comment and occasionally see others write on their blog  that they don't click on ads at web sites, EPJ included.

So I think it may be fun to go a bit behind the scenes as to why these ads continue to show up on the pages of EPJ and most other commercial web sites.

Here's a bit of background. Most of the ads you see at EPJ are generated by Google Adsense and are pushed through by their technology based on what they know about you, so everyone doesn't see the same ads.

I find it funny when I occasionally get an email from a person that goes something like this, "Why are you featuring ads by X?" Of course, I am not seeing those ads and most others are not seeing those ads, it is because Google has detected some type of interest by the emailer in that topic.

The way my business model is structured, about 30% of my EPJ earnings comes via Google Adsense, 65% comes via the EPJ Daily Alert and 5% comes via Amazon commissions. So how am I generating 30% of my earnings from ads that no one thinks they are clicking on?

My click through rates is roughly 0.5%. That means out of 200 visitors, only 1 clicks on an ad. Indeed, it also means that over a two year period, a regular visitor clicks on an ad, on average, roughly only 3 times. How do I get this number? Say there is a regular visitor who visits the site not every day, but almost everyday. Say 300 times a year, which, of course means, 600 visits  over a two year period. At a click through rate of 0.5% that works out to the 3 clicks every 2 years.

So if a person comes to EPJ 600 times over two years and only clicks on ads 3 times during those 600 visits, it is very easy to see how that person thinks he "never" clicks on ads.

No one "never" clicks on ads, but it is not done very often---just often enough to make it part of a viable business model. So thank you for visiting and "never" clicking on the ads :)

While I am at it, let me also comment on the amazing technology that allows Google to come up with relevant ads. I know, I know, people hate that Google can track you.  But Google is not the government, which means that you can always opt out of Google tracking in many different ways---unlike government tracking where there are no opt out options. When I don't want Google to know what I am up to, I take the necessary steps to insure that they can not track me. But for the most part, I find the Google tracking very helpful. When I recently bought Golden State Warriors tickets through Stub Hub, Google somehow detected this and started slamming me with Golden State Warriors ads. Recently, I was seeking information on outsourcing overseas some bookkeeping work. Viola! In no time, Google was serving up great ads from overseas outsourcing firms.

Ads are not our enemies, as any student of Austrian economics should know. Information is not dispersed evenly through out the world, and ads are one way of getting information to us. Google is doing great work in this way. Non-intrusive ads just sit there doing nothing until that one time roughly every 7 months when we decide we are interested in a little more information---and we then click. Awesome stuff.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank.