The Price of Free Google Report.
Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.
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It would be interesting to calculate the user’s value of the time wasted on this shit.
My guess is that online advertising has a negative return for society as a whole. It should be illegal.
You use an android because you like it
I use an android to drive advertising revenue down
We are not the same
I use an android because Apple has been insufferable about allowing users to run that they want to run and customize their phone how they want to customize their phone.
Google is now showing signs that they want to do the same.
I will move to a linux tablet, watch and a cellular wifi AP if I have to
You should try GrapheneOS. It has no Google crap installed by default, and if you install Play Services for apps that need it, it will be sandboxed so it can’t track you or limit sideloading.
Not far enough. Google if fucking with their appstore, they eventually want it to be a walled garden. If that happens, developers will be hard-pressed to release versions for both Google and aurora (or f-droid or whatever)
I want chat, I want a working camera, a working web browser and to be able to make and take calls. That’s all doable from Linux today, the battery life just really sucks.
GrapheneOS supports F-droid and essentially all APK files. The built in camera and SMS apps work and so do most IM apps and web browsers.
I’m already looking into it lol. From this point on, every device I purchase needs to run Linux.
As far as I can tell, we’re getting close. The kernel needs more handheld power-saving techniques, and honestly, we need some more small-format current technology devices supported. Everyone is locking everything down.
I’d even roll my own SBC project, but the power situation is still too damn sketchy
We are getting very close. FEX and any Waydroid improvements ValvE upstreams will also help a ton for apps that depend on them. I’ve also had success with setting up suspend-on-sleep on older laptops battery-wise, so you could always try that in the meantime.
Imagine if humanity would spend all this energy and effort into things that would actually benefit humanity world wide. Medicine and medical personnel, food research and production, education, housing, care for the elderly…
Oh man, this world could be so nice…
We’re still basically monkeys with nukes.
AND impatience
I want to argue against that but that would take too much time.
Ape live short die fast time 4 individual ape priceless
AND impotence
Monkeys with nukes and powerful killer AI agents.
I think about this all the time. Tech company spends $19 billion more in ai, etc. Meanwhile, my local school system is firing teachers over a $500,000 shortfall.
I’ve said that endless times about the military industrial complex.
Earth’s humanity could be so well cared for without that BS.
Are you saying Google search is not beneficial or Proton’s price gauge report is not beneficial?
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Nah, better using it for guns and nukes.
Gotta nuke something. 🤷
This feels like a good post to mention AdNauseam! For anyone who wants an adblocker that helps more than just you! It basically blocks ads but also sends a click request to every ad that should have been loaded. The data being sent with this request contains spoofed garbage data that makes the tracking data sets lose value. It also keeps a funny metric on how much the estimated cost for your clicks is :)
it doesnt function with other adblockers though :(
As Pear said, its built on top of uBlock Origin, im pretty sure it has all of these same functionality with element blocking and filters built in.
It is a ublock fork, the best adblocker on desktop.
Ad networks have things like DoubleVerify, Human and Integral which can detect this, and it can cause account bans and captchas as well.
Account bans? Which accounts will be banned?
Social media accounts. The big social media platforms look for signs of automation (like auto clicking ads) and may lock your account for “spam” if they detect it.
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Well let’s see…
- I’ve used Firefox with uBlock Origins pretty much as soon as uBlock Origins came out. I’m now using Librewolf.
- Im using a YouTube extention that automatically skips sponsers and adreads.
- I don’t use Google for my searches. Haven’t for over 10 years.
- I use Spotify on my PC, with the Bash Spot X patch.
- My OS is also Linux, so no built-in ads.
- On my phone I have AdAway installed.
- I patched my YouTube app with ReVanced Manager, giving me block against ads, sponsers, and adreads.
- I don’t use Spotify on my phone, instead opting to download music I bought from artists (typically Bandcam) or get through Soulseek.
- I use Firefox on my phone too, with uBlock Origins. Did that for nearly as long as my PC.
- I also don’t use Google for my searches there.
I’m very curious about what my value to Google is, considering all that.
It’s crazy that we have to go to that much effort just to have a reasonably pleasant online experience.
Your location data. You help with traffic notifications, harveating of networks in relation to your location. Even if you dont use maps.
What is bash x spot?
I got it reversed, it’s spot x bash. But it’s bash script that modifies the spotify client to remove all ads. Doesn’t give you premium features, only removes ads. The script must also be run every time spotify updates.
I only drive to my work and back, no where else do I actually drive because I’m an introvert
Basically same,
- Linux and Graphene
- IronFox/Zen Browser with Adnauseam, Sponsorblock, DeArrow and ClearURLs
- Mullvad VPN with AdBlock (off because of Adnauseam).
- GrayJay instead of YouTube.
- SimpMusic + Locally downloaded songs for music.
- Local media server for movies
Only places i have yet to tighten privacy (AFAIK) is email and chats (did make a burner acc on Discord and deleted the old one though). I dont use social media apart from the fediverse. All those accounts are deleted.
Update:
I do use K9 Mail and Thunderbird for email clients and F-droid and Aurora Store as an app store replacement.
I want to set up a Jellyfin local media server. As soon as I get my own apartment I’m going to take a serious crack at hosting my own home server for a lot of my needs.
Why wait? I moves with you!
Bro that’s like my facebook PF…
Since Feb 2025 Google started using browser fingerprinting to track users. While you don’t see the ads, they’re still building a profile on you.
Pretty sure they started that well before 2025.
They specifically waited until after the inauguration to avoid legal pushback. The Google “Code Yellow” started in 2019 that eventually found this as the final solution.
Also, Ironfox and Cromite are awesome too!
Hopefully Ironfox and Librewolf both replace Firefox itself overtime somehow (Since Firefox new leadership has been enshittifying it), maybe Cromite can do same for Chromium too
What do you recommend for searches?
I’ve been using Startpage, it gives me often better results than google does these days. The image search is shit though, have to use something else for that
I have been using DuckDuckGo and SearXNG.
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You can’t generate ad revenue from me if I have ad blockers.
Until you log into gmail and give them a fingerprint to share around. They still track you unfortunately.
Then how do you support our corporate overloads?
They’ll just have to eat the money they already have.
Let them eat cash,
The top 10% of profiles: heavy desktop users — generate 43% of all advertiser value
Helps explain why Microsoft has started injecting ads into the OS so aggressively.
I wonder how much money people have wasted buying my data. I have ad blockers everywhere, I never see a single ad or sponsored message, if their system actually works it should be marked worthless.
I’ve made it as hard as i can to track me. And I will continue to do so. Fuck advertisers.
At this point it has become my hobby
Yup. I made it my life’s work to deprive those cunts like Google of as much money as I can. Fuck them so hard
If I see an ad get though my layers of blockers, I see it as an embarrassment. Usually just means I got to refresh ublock.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
Just imagine how much people have to buy through ads to justify this amount of ad spending.
It’s just Americans. Very vulnerable to suggestions and very wealthy at the same time.
Everyone is susceptible to advertising — the principles rely on fundamental human psychology, just the same as propaganda. However, Americans simultaneously are served more ads in their day-to-day than most other places, and also have a captured education system that is designed to create more unthinking consumers.
Americans are also the primary target it’s all adjusted for. Ads are a social mechanism.
Even ads for non-American audiences sometimes copy ads aimed at Americans in various detail which doesn’t make sense there.
Somewhat similar to perception of fashion differing between living in a big city or in a rural area. In a big city everything is happening around you. In a rural area you learn of things happening, might get interested, might not.
OK, I might be simplifying things.
“Wealthy”
Compared to the rest of the world - yeah. Be that 30 years ago or now. Things that are normal for Americans are something impractically good for the rest of the world.
I mean, there are median and average income maps and such on the web.
But I admit that everything is different, say, in most countries you can do fine without a car. Of what I’ve read and heard about USA, a car seems more important than a place to bunk (I mean, the whole concept of someone with financial problems sleeping in their car seems wild from a country where a car is something less basic than a living place).
America is gold-plated and even then only for top 5%
Wage slavery exists all over the globe, america included. Thinking Americans are “wealthy” while actual billionaires exist will ensure our globe never unites.
The ruling class united long ago, that’s why they keep winning.
I think there’s a degree of moving goalposts here.
A mid-XIX-century worker could die of hunger if they lost their job. There wouldn’t be any social services or boarding houses for poor to feed their children, and their wife - you know. OK, I mean, there were boarding houses, but that was even worse than growing up in a poor family.
An early-XX-century worker was still in similar danger, but there were both organized labor and changing level of life. Working their way out of poverty being real and a lot more accessible press and education were some of the changes from the previous. And political rights too.
A mid-XX-century worker could basically live normally through hard work. And one could say that both in Warsaw block and in the West social nets were in place. In the third world not yet. !@#, me and writing about hard work.
“Wage slavery” of a person who’ll die of hunger and of a person who’ll feel bad from looking poor, but will have socialized options for food, board and even help with looking for a job, are two very different situations.
So let’s please remember that we, Americans included, already sort of live in a socialist heaven compared to 100 years ago.
I think humanity is improving.
“Wage slavery” of a person who’ll die of hunger and of a person who’ll feel bad from looking poor, but will have socialized options for food, board and even help with looking for a job
What country are you from? Clearly you aren’t familiar with Americans’ reality.
OK. Russia. Suppose I’m not.
Yeah. Americans are very wealthy in general. And very trigger happy for spending with their credit cards
K
By corporate searches, I think they mean searches for work.
I don’t spend much discretionary income on stuff I search, that amount of advertising/SEO would be almost entirely wasted on my personal life. But my work related searches are very different, products and services I use for work projects add up to much more than I make in a year. I mostly use DDG though, fuck Google.
What defines advertising value to calculate this?
I dont buy anything online, Amazon or otherwise. And I dont engage with any ads unless by mistake. I suppose there is value in market research itself but nobody is making any sales revenue off somebody like me.
but nobody is making any sales revenue off somebody like me.
Everybody who thinks this is definitely having sales revenue made off of them. It needs to be restated forever in discussions like this that the metric for success in online advertising is not largely “oh shit, I could go for one of those right now”.
Those are what stick out in our mind because we remember them. I really did see an ad for Roblox as a kid and immediately go start playing. But sooooo much of advertising is subconscious to a point that we couldn’t possibly measure its true effect except by statistics.
Even beyond what we purchase: I’ve been bombarded with sponsorships for Raycons for years. Even with SponsorBlock on YouTube, sometimes they leak through. I will never buy a Raycon product. But I still occasionally talk about them, inadvertently advertising them, simply because they’re a good punching bag. I watched a whole video reviewing what pieces of shit Raycons are. Fuck it: I’m talking about Raycon right now. And that’s still among the worst-case scenarios for the advertiser. So much of advertising isn’t “I want this product now” or even “this product looks desirable”; it’s headspace.
The idea that advertisers’ psychological manipulation just doesn’t work on certain people needs to die and stay dead. If you saw it, it had an effect on you, and any effect is a better effect than nothing. If you realize an advertisement worked on you, the advertisement has failed part of its job.
People think they’re not targets because they don’t do certain things, but not being part of a group also says a lot about you! User blocking ads? This is information about you. User doesn’t buy online? Also information about you. Everything is information and everything together is a valuable consumer profile
What about me? On the rare occasion I see an advertisement, I have no idea what I’m even seeing. I saw a commercial a few days ago when my adblock failed.
A woman running through a public park. A man hidden in bushes, in all black watching her with binoculars. More shots of her running. He slips down into the bushes. Screen goes black, and then plain white text. “He’s watching”.
WHAT THE HELL AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO BUY???
WHAT THE HELL AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO BUY???
If you’re a woman, sexy jogging gear. If you’re a man, binoculars and tick repellent. If you’re nonbinary, donate to your local parks department to fund sidewalks and bushes.
It’s just that simple.
The binoculars? Or maybe it was an ad for hot singles in your area?
My assumption would be it was an ad for a VPN or some sort of internet privacy service. An ad got through when it normally doesn’t is what leads me to believe that.
I mean, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but the sentence “If you saw it, it had an effect on you, and any effect is a better effect than nothing” is just absolutely wrong. Getting a person to install an ad blocker is bad, getting a person to talk negatively about you is bad, like the whole “no press is bad press” thing is not true. You telling everyone you know that raycons are bad is directly bad for the company.
Scientists finding out that sodas are bad for you didn’t result in more soda sales, it resulted in fewer.
Companies absolutely do not want you talking shit about them, that’s literally why they use NPS to measure how well they’re doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score
“If you realize an advertisement worked on you, the advertisement has failed part of its job.” Is also just wrong, but let’s argue one point at a time.
Finally “Everybody who thinks this is definitely having sales revenue made off of them” is such an all encompassing statement it will never be true. I think that the majority of companies I see advertisements for will never make sales revenue off of me. Why? Well many reasons, but you haven’t really bothered to think of why that could be the case and you’ve just made a wide all encompassing statement so I’m not really sure I want to bother. But I will make one point. People thinking about a product has nothing to do with spending money on that product. I’m sure that you know someone that talks to you about raycons all the time (oh wait, maybe that’s your friends). Do you (they) go out and spend money on raycons? Probably not. Same for talking about new cars, etc.
Sentiment matters, which is what a lot of advertisement is, not headspace.
For a great example of this, look at amazon with their Super Bowl ring advertisement (which I didn’t even see). Do you think that resulted in more sales or less?
Ed Bernays pioneered this stuff, to the best of my knowledge.
The Century of Self - documentary by Adam Curtis
The Century of Self, by Adam Curtis, discusses the emergence and rise of psychoanalysis as a pivotal means of persuasion for corporations and governments. It covers the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, as well as PR consultant Edward Bernays. The series reveals how those in positions of power have used Freud’s theories to influence and control the public.
Ever since a nephew of Freud introduced concepts of Psychology into the Marketing world back in the mid XX century that advertising has shift mainly to work via psychological effects.
Perfect examples are perfume TV adverts (all about associating a perfume with sex and feeling sexy) and Car TV adverts (generally about associating a car with freedom, success and sometimes power).
So yeah, most of that shit is meant to just reside in your subconscious and subtly prod you towards a certain product or service at the right time, even if only because a certain brand name feels “familiar” or even “trustworthy” when you have to make a choice about a kind of product or service you don’t usually buy.
I’m guilty of exactly this. I buy almost nothing online. But I recently got into weight lifting. I wanted good at home adjustable dumbbells. I have a fully stocked gym that I use four times a week, but when I miss a day, I want to at least do something.
Fast forward to me refusing to pay $1,000 for them. I am the target demographic described in the high income no kids male part and low and behold, a beautiful kind Lemming pointed out I can get the exact pair I had been looking for on Facebook marketplace cheaper (and new) on a website I’d never heard of.
Watching reviews, breakdowns, demos, all were imprinting in my mind that I want this particular set. Am I sucker? Maybe. Did I spend $250 on a product I use often and increases my overall quality of life? Definitely.
Yeah, you look at products long enough, and you start getting imprinted with what ends up looking like a reasonable price. Is it a good or bad thing? I don’t know. But, like you said, you use it and it’s worth it to you.
Personally, I got a regular set of 1" weights, two 1" dumbbell bars, and clips. And a cable column. That was way back during covid, and it helped get me through being at home a lot. Now I just go to a gym.
This sounds like something the advertising world would want you to believe. It’s in their interest to keep the public thinking that advertising works. It’s good for their bottom line if people believe that even if you don’t act on an ad immediately it’s something that eventually nudges you.
Maybe that’s not true. Maybe, in fact, sometimes advertising is a net negative because you’re bombarded so often with an ad that you come to resent the company pushing it. I don’t know what Raycon is, but based on what you’ve said I’m also not interested in ever giving them money. So, the worst case for the advertiser is that not only do their ads reduce sales from people who are reached by those ads, they also reduce sales in anybody those people talk to.
The idea that advertisers’ psychological manipulation just works on people needs to die and stay dead. If you saw it, it had an effect on you, and if that effect is negative then it’s obviously worse than nothing.
For every sane individual like yourself there’s 10 others that happily say “I kept getting these ads for this thing on Instagram so I decided to buy it to see if it’s any good.”
“i got manipulated” is how I hear it
Not that I think I’m not susceptible. I am. That’s why I hate ads and do everything I can to avoid them.
I lean into it intentionally sometimes. Some of those things sponsor the things I like, and I want those things to be keep happening, so I’ll buy some Pagoda egg rolls that I never would have touched otherwise.
That doesn’t work with the really intrusive ads though.
nobody is making any sales revenue off somebody like me.
I think this shows the fundamental misunderstanding here. It’s not about money coming out of your bank account. While that might be the goal, at the end of the day they are not chasing you personally, they are chasing statistics. But it’s more than just market statistics. It is about sales revenue, but not about you personally. A few points need to be made here:
#1: GOOGLE is making sales revenue off somebody like you. You are not necessarily the individual target of the direct revenue extraction, the advertisers are. You are the product that Google is selling to advertisers. Are you a shitty, unusable, defective-by-design product? Maybe. Is Google scamming advertisers by selling you to them? Maybe. The point is, that doesn’t matter, except perhaps in a philosophical sense. The advertisers are willingly paying for you. They know the statistics, and they are still willing to pay a lot for you and your group, because statistically, they are convinced it benefits them. Google is getting money from the advertisers to provide whatever access to you and the rest of your group that they can.
#2: Somebody is making sales revenue off you directly. I don’t know who that is, and maybe Google doesn’t either, but to survive in this world as “A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches” your money has to be going somewhere, and trying to find out and adjust where is an addictive and profitable passtime for Google, advertisers, and all other data brokers involved in this trade. Whether they actually succeed or not, they’re going to have a hell of a time trying, and they’re going to convince other people it’s worthwhile for them to continue to try and they’re going to get paid to do it no matter how fruitless it might seem. Again, it’s not necessarily about you individually, it’s about what they can sell you as.
#3: At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether the individual you actually buys anything. Even if you truly are totally DIY, off-grid and self-sufficient and dumping all your money into a pit under your mattress. If you do end up simply being an outlier in your particular demographic group, even if you’re in a large category of outliers in that group, what matters is that the group buys stuff, and you’re part of it, they don’t know if you’re the good part of the group or the bad part of the group, they want the whole group and they’ll let it sort itself out. The other members of that group will more than make up for your lack of revenue stream. It’s possible just one single member of that group will make up for literally every other wasted target in that group. These so-called “whales” are like the gold sifted out of thousands of tons of gravel and dirt. You don’t care about how much gravel and dirt you went through, getting a higher percentage with much less effort out of a much smaller claim doesn’t make you any richer, what matters is how much gold you ended up with. Would they like to narrow that group to remove outliers like you to get an even higher return on investment with even less effort? They would probably consider that an ideal. Does it really matter to their bottom line? Evidently not. This works for them and the people who pay them. It’s why they’re one of the richest companies in the world.
How do you search for a restaurant or a barber when you’re in a city you’ve never been before? Or how do you rent a car on an airport in another country? You ask for a telephone book?
How do you search for a restaurant or a barber when you’re in a city you’ve never been before?
Walk up to somebody on the street and say “what’s a good restaurant” or “my hair is out of control, I just got here and I need a haircut, stat”
Or how do you rent a car on an airport in another country?
I walk to the counter that says “rentals”, because airports are used to this
Edit: sorry for answering the question I guess
I’m not the person you asked, but depending on the country you live, the good places like restaurants and markets may not be online, so we have to use good old word of mouth to find them. I used to search for all places online, but I had to learn the way of my ancestors to find the good stuff around here, because the places listed online are always the most expensive and presumptuous, while lacking actual quality.
But for things like electronics, cars and anything not available locally, it’s really hard to even imagine viable anternatives to searching in the internet
I typically find those things on the map. Or in specialized apps. Don’t see how it’s ad driven revenue.
Also who is changing barbers every time or moving between cities every few weeks? It’s like once a year thing for most people, isn’t it?
the point was you may be using some advertised service even if you think you don’t.
Even just walking down the street looking for a place for lunch, the street signs are advertising to you.
By chance, maybe, but I specifically don’t click on “Advertised” links in search results. Even if do, does it matter if I’d chose service anyway? Coz all it changes is money moved from one rich ass to another. It doesn’t make me buy what I didn’t plan to buy. Contrary, I might avoid products which are too pushy with ads. In place where I come from people used to say that good things don’t need advertisement. So to me this ad changes nothing. If tomorrow world stop making ads nothing changes to me - I do search, it gives me options, I do research and make a decision
No OP, but I have never done any of those things in your example.
Bullshit. Are you my 93 year old grandmother?
have you ever made a planned purchase? if so, it’s almost imposible you were not influence by marketing even if it only was to narrow your choices to what’s available in your market
marketing is EVERYWHERE… there is no escaping it unfortunately
Stripes, swoosh, “N” on shoes. Alligator or mini polo player on shirt. A horse hood ornament . A particular signature color, stitching. Ultrawealthy can recognize brands without logos.
I guess you can always buy the cheapest off-brand item without previous search…
sure but you cannot do that for every purchase in your life… and even the off-brands advertise and have exclusivity agreements for distribution
Like you don’t research a place before you travel, or you just don’t travel? Do you never research a product before purchasing or do you just work with whatever is available in your local store? If you’re buying a car, is it just whatever is on the side of the road or do you search for expert reviews or reliability data?
Oh I was just talking about those particular examples.
Do you never research a product before purchasing or do you just work with whatever is available in your local store? If you’re buying a car, is it just whatever is on the side of the road or do you search for expert reviews or reliability data?
I, for one, actively search out the reviews from entities that go out of their way to not be sponsored by the makers of the products they’re reviewing.
Is phone book an ad? The fact I bought something does not mean I did it because ad convinced me. When one buys a car presume they check what is available on the market and select option based on comparison. Same with travel, you don’t visit place because you saw poster somewhere, you have limit time so you find a list of popular options and pick what to visit. It’s exactly what you called it - research and review. It’s people rating things helping you make your choices, not companies convincing this is what you want to buy by showing you 10 seconds stupid ass video. Or at least I hope. I never understood the concept of ads beyond informing that this business exists. From my perspective could be just brand name and what it sells. No difference to me. I always thought it would be much better to just have site list of businesses with description and reviews
my grandfather goes to the nearest building and asks. if they don’t know he moves to the next person
I’ve just had an epiphany (or maybe a half-baked showerthought) reading this thread.
All marketers are trying to sell people stuff, but if you think about it, what’s the one thing in common that they’re all trying to sell, and that they’re presumably best at?
Their own services.
So who knows if this “advertising value” has any relationship with reality, or if it’s just inflated bullshit marketers make up to sell themselves.
Also note how all the AI companies are either tech companies funded by advertising themselves, or funded by other tech companies who are funded by advertising. The goal of advertising is to convince you of things. They literally made a product designed to convince you of things, they made it really convincing, and then they convinced everyone AI is some world-changing, job-destroying, civilization-revolutionizing, future-defining hyperscale meta-technology that everybody has to have because it will simultaneously pit the entire world against each other and unify it into a post-scarcity tech utopia. And people are only now starting to do a double-take and actually start to look closer to see that it’s just a cardboard cutout of artificial intelligence distilled from real people, with no actual intelligence behind it and quite possibly no real future.
How much someone is willing to spend to put an ad in front of you.
What defines advertising value to calculate this?
It’s literally defined in the very first line of the article
I need to start poisioning my data more and make it stupid expensive to advertise to me.
I just got this ad which just felt hilarious as I’ve no connections to Ghana
That you know of!
Yeah!
The sinister part is that this ad might not be for you.
Do you have a friend, family member, or coworker that has shared wifi and space with you that has a connection to Ghana? This is meant to get you taking to them about it
Nope, I have my own network that’s locked down and not shared with anyone else. If I’m not at home, I’m on 5G, never public/work wi-fi
Could be a rough postcode guess, then. With lagtime.
My play store ads are all based on my VPN IP from weeks ago. Sounds like you’re done well foiling the algos.
AdNauseaum.
But google still gets paid. The advertisers will just pump money into Google’s coffers.
I think the amount would go down though if we all poisen our data, making it useless. :thinking_face:
That’s just loss to the end user advertisers. Google still gets paid.
High-value, low-value
😑
Google is a femcel
Link is to a shit pdf on a proton drive. It’s a basic description of the Google auction house. The prices they list are largely driven by the bids advertisers place, but that’s not to say Google doesn’t charge a bigger minimum for different demographic segments, they very much do. As does Facebook etc.
For example, one reason that parents are worth less is because of the products they listed. Diapers cost less than business lawyers, so the margins are much slimmer, so advertisers aren’t going to bid as much for an ad placement.
It does miss one thing that is, in my opinion, one of the more revolting aspects of their auction house. As a bidder your dollar is worth less than a big company’s dollar, even as little as one tenth. You could bid a million dollars on an ad space that Apple only bid $100001 on and you’d lose. That gap is dynamically calculated (at least in part) based on comparative search rankings.
Here’s the text without their ad at the end:
The Price of Free Google
What the Ad Industry Pays to Target Americans
A Proton Mail analysis of 54,216 advertiser-defined profiles across the U.S.
The price of your attention
Every user has a price
Every Google search triggers an invisible, real-time auction where advertisers bid for access to your attention. These bids are calculated in milliseconds based on how likely you are to spend. This is how the system decides what you are worth to advertisers.
Proton analyzed 54,216 advertiser-defined profiles across 251 U.S. cities using real ad-market pricing.
● Highest-value user: $17,929/year
● Lowest-value user: $31/yearThat’s a 577x difference. This disparity is not an anomaly — it is the business model.
“Google doesn’t just build a profile from the information you knowingly provide. If you sign up for services, click ads, or ignore others, that creates signals the system can use to infer much more than you realize. It can start with age or interests, then expand into assumptions about income, family status, political leanings, or religion.
When the system isn’t sure, it tests those assumptions by serving different ads, links, or recommendations and watching how you respond. It doesn’t just tracking who you are. It’s constantly learning, so it can price access to you more precisely.”
— Eamonn Maguire, Director of Engineering, Machine Learning & AIWho the system values most — and least These two profiles illustrate how the same system assigns radically different value.
$17,929/year
● 35–44, male
● Bozeman, MT
● Not a parent
● Desktop, heavy userHigh-intent, high-margin services:
● business lawyer
● home renovation
● golf courses$31/year
● 18–24, male
● Fort Smith, AR
● Parent
● Android, casual userPrice-sensitive, lower-margin searches:
● cheap diapers
● family apartments
● toddler clothesSame system. Same country. 577x difference.
Value is not distributed equally
The gap between the average and the median shows that a small number of high-value users disproportionately influence the system.The top 10% of users generate 43% of total value.
● Average value: $1,605/year
● Median value: $760/yearMost users are worth far less than the system’s top performers.
How your value is calculated
Your value is constantly recalculated
Your value is not fixed. It is continuously recalculated based on signals that predict the likelihood of a commercially valuable action.
These signals include:
● What you search
● When you search
● What device you use
● Who you are inferred to beHigh-intent searches — such as legal services, insurance, or financial products — command significantly higher prices than general browsing or informational queries. Your value can change from one moment to the next depending on what you do. In this system, behavior matters more than time spent
The signals behind the price
Your device changes your value
Device usage has a measurable impact on how users are valued.
● Desktop: $2,894/year
● iPhone: $1,338/year
● Android: $585/yearDesktop users are worth nearly 5x more than Android users — even when everything else is the same.
These differences reflect observed behavior — including conversion rates and commercial intent — not the cost of the device itself. Your device becomes a proxy for purchasing behavior.
Parents are systematically valued less
Parental status affects how users are priced within the system.
Non-parents are worth ~17% more on average.
The gap increases during peak earning years:
● 25–34: +24%
● 35–44: +34.5%Having children reduces your perceived commercial value.
Same age — same location — same device. Different value.
Value peaks in midlife
User value is highest between the ages of 25 and 44.
This period corresponds with:
● Major financial decisions
● High-value purchases
● Career-related servicesAs users age, overall value declines — but does not disappear. For users 65+, approximately 75% of value is concentrated in:
● Health
● Real estate
● Financial planningThe system adapts by narrowing focus rather than reducing targeting.
Gender is not a primary driver of value
Gender has a measurable but limited impact on how users are priced within the ad ecosystem.
Average values across genders are broadly similar — with differences in the single digits.
Differences in value are driven primarily by how advertisers price categories of demand — not by gender alone. Higher-value industries — such as finance, legal services, and B2B technology — tend to influence outcomes more strongly than identity itself.
As a result, gender can affect value indirectly, but it is not a consistent or defining factor.
Where you live affects what you’re worth
Local economies shape how much advertisers are willing to pay for access to users.
Location alone can dramatically change what you’re worth.
Highest-value markets include:
- Edmond, OK
- Bozeman, MT
- Naperville, IL
- Santa Fe, NM
- Durham, NC
Lowest-value markets include:
247. Greensboro, NC
248. Gulfport, MS
249. Fort Smith, AR
250. Lowell, MA
251. West Valley City, UTMore usage means more value
Frequency of use acts as a multiplier on user value.
● Heavy users: $3,611/year
● Average users: $843/year
● Casual users: $362/yearHeavy users generate nearly 10x more value than casual users. More usage doesn’t just increase your value — it multiplies it.
This creates strong incentives to maximize engagement.
I wonder what the value of an ad nauseum user is…
What’s really crazy is that other than the fact all of this data is collected about you and freely sold among all these companies while it’s nearly impossible to see your own information or try to correct inaccuracies. It’s like a social credit score and online systems are very good at following people between devices.
They don’t sell this data. It’s too valuable to Google. They charge companies to display ads to people. They don’t tell companies who is who so they can show them the ads themselves. That’s why you can’t access this data. No one can.
You can, if you allow personalized ads.
Not that I believe for a second not allowing them changes a single thing, they just don’t show it.
Yep, they are still very convinced I’m a senior citizen. Possibly because of some bureaucratic mixups from when my dad passed away; at least that’s when I started getting AARP mailers, end of life planning and other such stuff intended for someone thirty years older than me
They’re getting to you early.
