Yes, sometimes I see something that looks interesting and click to learn more. But I think more often than not I'll just open an incognito window and search for it instead of clicking on the ad.

Yes, it happens from time to time.

We are not allowed to run an adblocker on company computers so I see ads when browsing the web, sometimes I see an ad for a cool product from my local camera shop that I want to learn more about, then I click the ad.

Yes!

Probably a couple of times a year, some interesting product will catch my eye. It doesn't necessarily mean I'd be willing to buy the product. The last thing I clicked on was a yarbo ad. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay 5 to 10 grand for a robot tractor, but to be honest the thing looks pretty cool. I watch the entire ad did a quick search for pricing and what about my day. Now I'll probably see 420,000 different ads for it but that's okay it still looks pretty cool.

Yeah. Do I buy it just from their marketing? No. Have I bought things that I found as ads? Absolutely. Advertising has a legitimate purpose.

Admittedly I've clicked on a handful of interesting Youtube ads but not one in the past 5 years, so I can't remember what they were. I just don't really see Youtube ads unless I'm on a mobile device or I turn them on to help a creator get revenue, as I use a pretty strong adblocker on my PC. Don't snitch to Google about that though.

I'm a bit more sympathetic to Youtube ads since they are a revenue source for some of my favorite creators, as much as I hate the way Youtube goes about it. Never clicked on any other ads besides these though.

I have clicked on political ads for the other team, so they get charged for clicks. Petty, I know

Only for things I was planning on purchasing beforehand and happened to see a sale had started. So the ad saved me from waiting and actively watching for a sale since I don't create accounts for every company I purchase from.

to provide an answer from the advertiser’s perspective, they are very aware that the Click Through Rate (CTR) is incredibly low, as corroborated by the comments, actually measured at about 0.2%.

because it’s so small and potentially difficult to track, other metrics besides CTR are used alongside by marketers, including total impressions, conversion rates between other channels and, yes, tracing your browsing history by way of cookies and other invasive digital tools.