Ran across this quote today which I just had to blog from WordPress.com’s Matt Mullenweg since I found it funny:
“We decided to show ads only on certain pages, only to the people who were sort of random drive-by visitors…if you use Firefox, you’ll never see an ad, no matter what, mostly because I like Firefox.”
Also kinda interesting from a business perspective. There’s been some suggestion over time that Firefox users are prone to ignore ads. Partially because of extensions that block ads (though products to block ads on the OS level, and in IE exist too btw), but partially because they are said to be more technical.
I wonder if a practice like this actually provides a higher click through rate. Because they only show ads in certain places, it’s not about total impressions (they control that by picking where to show ads, and when). They control how many impressions they run in a given period. By targeting those more inclined to click on ads, theoretically your ratio should be higher.
I’ve heard of quite a few different ways to target ads over the years, but this is a new one.