I've never intentionally clicked on an ad, ever. I've accidentally clicked a few, due to tricks or fat fingers.

Ah... I remember back when Anandtech would run a monthly roundup of hard drives that would usually insist that you pay another $150-$200 for a hard drive because hypothetically the more esoteric consumer SKUs were 3db softer or consumed 0.2W less than the mass-produced least-cost enterprise Seagates. [1] They unquestioningly quoted the spec sheets and never did any tests whereas everyone knows you can't trust spec sheets when it comes to noise and power.

The thing was that site kept reflowing the layout over and over again and I think the point was that they were hoping you were going to click on something you saw on the sidebar and then it would reflow and an ad would be there right at the second when you clicked and then... Ka-Ching!

[1] Funny reversal that the enterprise product is mass market and the consumer product is overpriced if not gold-plated.

You never watched a YouTube video that was some kind of teleshopping show ?

Did you read the article? If so, you clicked on an ad. This blog post was an ad for datacops.

And if you've ever scrolled social media or used the internet at all, you've read and clicked ads.

Only considering old school "Ads by google" banners as ads and then patting yourself on the back for never clicking them is pretty faint praise for your ad evasion skills.

No, of course I've read longer form posts and then realized they were just there for product placement, or affilate links, etc.

I don't click display ads or links to Amazon or YouTube listings, etc. If I want to buy something I try to go directly to the manufacture's site and search for it there. If I have to go to a third party sales platform I'll go there and search for the thing I want.

I rarely click on YouTube recommedations, because they are more and more just AI slop. I subscribe to people whose content is interesting, and that's the vast majority of what I watch.

Yeah. Even in the extremely rare circumstance where if I actually want to see more about the product I specifically search it instead of clicking on it because everyone knows clicking on the ad is how you get infected, spied, on or scammed. And I think they already discarded 'views' long ago as too useless ironically.