For a lot of advertising, the key business objective is impression, not click.

Pretty much any advertiser who spends major money on TV is going for impressions - clicks have no real meaning and are merely a bonus.

For instance, think Coke ads - the objective is to create a certain brand association in your mind by showing you imagery in advertising. Your clicking and buying Coke the instant you see an ad is not an objective. They want to make sure you choose Coke when you buy cola, perhaps even think that you are a "Coke person" rather than Pepsi person.

A lot of money out there in the advertising business is ther for this kind of business objective.

> That some advertisers think they should pay by impression and not by click is their own stupidity.

It's not. Ads can be entirely successful without a click - sometimes it'll just be a reminder of the brand's name the next time you are shopping for their product. "Users running adblockers likely wouldn't click the ads anyway" is a pretty naive view of how the ad industry operates.

> sometimes it'll just be a reminder of the brand's name the next time you are shopping for their product.

All it does is make me avoid the product out of spite.

This isn't what usually happens though. If advertising drove negative value to a brand over time it just wouldn't be purchased.

Not many companies can take off purely on the quality of their product, especially in boring industries. I can't think of an insurance company which I learned about outside of widespread advertising.

Assuming you're consciously aware of what's going on. Maybe you are, but you wouldn't know if you aren't. You can't really claim to be immune to subconscious tricks.

The Mere Exposure Effect does work though, probably more effectively than you realize.