How effective is Googles 'Sponsored Links' on you?
As a web-literate person I like to think I’m pretty good at avoiding the pitfalls of online advertising. You have to be an idiot to click on 99% of internet advertisements, as they are spam and irrelevant to what you’re browsing.
However, Google’s AdSense algorithms are as smart as its PageRank one, and it’s one of the few trusted and effective ad publishers out there. Despite this thought I thought I was pretty damn good at avoiding the ominous ‘sponsored links’. However, according to my Google ‘web history’ I seem to average around 1 sponsored click every day! That’s a lot more than I thought it would be.
To see this yourself, visit https://www.google.com/history/. You’ll now see all your Google searches. On the left are filter options. Click ‘Sponsored Links’ and… there you go! Every Google ad you’ve ever clicked.